


Electric Heart

by BarlowGirl



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Androids, Asexual Derek, Asexual Derek Hale, Grey-Asexual Derek, M/M, POV Derek, POV Derek Hale, Season 2 Rewrite, ace derek, this is weird but i like it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 07:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11641782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarlowGirl/pseuds/BarlowGirl
Summary: Derek looks at Stilinski, and thinks about Argents, thinks about recording devices slipped into his bags and clothing, lipstick stains on his skin. Outside, he can hear Stiles goofing around with the intern Scott, making sarcastic remarks and laughing, and under that noise, that fragile, fluttering heartbeat.“What am I supposed to do with him?” Derek asks roughly.Stilinski levels a sharp look at him. “Why did you ask Argent for him?”Derek leans back against the couch. Shrugs. “He saved my life,” he says carefully. “Figured I’d return the favour.”OR: In the near future, Derek meets a very peculiar android named Stiles and takes a liking to him.I continue to be terrible at summaries.





	Electric Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't have much to say about this one. I just really like it, and it's been hanging out forever, and I think I should get it posted soon. 
> 
> Also, a bunch of the dialogue in this comes right from the show. I looked up transcripts and rewatched the relevant scenes, and some of it is word for word. I'm pointing out that out because some of it does not sound realistic XD
> 
> Baby fic update soonish. I've been slacking on posting.
> 
> Learn a little more about me on [Tumblr](http://barlowstreet.tumblr.com/post/151220254193/well-theres-a-bio-under-this-read-more).

ARGENT headquarters always smells funny to Derek. Cool, sharp electronics, gun oil, and that hospital disinfectant scent. They do, however, have the only decent pool for thirty miles, and Derek has employee faculty privileges courtesy of Laura. He’d rather be running, but it’s nasty out, and while it doesn’t affect werewolves, Derek would rather not get caught in the woods when the fog is so thick. The guards are just obnoxious.

He strips down in an empty locker room, then swims for a long time. He’ll admit to himself, but absolutely no one else, that he doesn’t particularly mind swimming. Likes working his body, and it’s… there’s not as much mental noise. It reminds him of running, measured movement and breathing. A way to sink into his head and try and find that quiet place where he doesn’t have to _think_. But, still, he hates the ARGENT building, arches to floor to smell that made up so much of her –

Anyway. He swims, hard, until he’s half-exhausted, wrung out and satisfied, then washes off as much of the smell of chlorine as he can in the building’s sad excuse for showers.

He’s just finished up lacing up his boots on the bleachers when he smells it. Not the person who’s been sitting at the top of the bleachers – they’ve been there since Derek showed up; he didn’t particularly care if they watched him swim as long as they didn’t try to talk to him – but something… else. Something dark and unnatural that creeps over the scent of chlorine, followed by a long, low scraping sound. A bare second later, footsteps thunder down the stairs and someone grabs his shoulder.

“We really should not be here right now!” the person blurts.

“Shh,” Derek whispers, standing. He jerks his head towards the door and the person – kid, he looks like a kid, Derek thinks, looks maybe eighteen, all gangly limbs, close-cropped dark hair, and red tracksuit against pale ski – nods, begins to move towards it. Derek leaves his bag and gets in front of the kid.

They almost make it to the door, too.

Then this _thing_ drops in front of him. Slightly larger than a full-grown man, Derek’s brain catalogues uselessly. Dark, with some pattern like scales or something, slitted yellow eyes and way, way too many teeth. Not to mention the fucking _tail_.

The thing hisses, high-pitched and unnerving, and Derek growls back.

He half-turns and shoves the kid back, shouting, “Run!”

The boy stumbles, but doesn’t fucking _run_ , and the thing slices at the back of Derek’s neck.

“Your neck,” the kid says.

He spins towards the creature, reaching for his neck – and his knees give out. He braces himself to hit the floor, only for his back to hit a torso, and arms to grab him around the waist. Just as fast, the kid is shoving under Derek’s arm, looping it around his shoulders. He’s stronger than he looks, considering Derek’s got some height and a lot of weight on him.

“Okay, come on,” the kid says and starts to run, bearing more and more of Derek’s weight as his body goes dead. “Where did it go? Can you see it?”

“I can smell it,” he manages, low. The what-the-fuck is on the other side of the pool, moving closer. “Please hurry. Call help.”

“Yeah,” the kid said, fumbling a phone out of his pocket. Then his shaking hands fumble it right onto the ground.

And when he bends to grab it, Derek’s knees give out and he collapses right over the kid’s back.

Into the pool.

“Are you kidding–” he gets out before he hits the water.

Fuck. He couldn’t even die fighting the giant lizard thing. He’s going to drown, and his mother is going to be _pissed_ , and he doesn’t even get to die with dignity. Just water and the air in his lungs slowly running out because he can’t even move his arms anymore, dead weight in the water, and–

And arms wrapping around his waist and dragging him towards the service. His head breaks the surface of the water, and his arm is dragged back around shoulders that are quickly becoming all-too-familiar.

“Where did it go? Do you see it?” a voice says in his ear.

“No,” Derek manages, breathless.

“Okay, maybe it took off.”

The words are immediately followed by an unnatural screech.

“Maybe not,” Derek replies, then, sharply, “Can you get me out of here before I drown?”

“You’re worried about drowning?” the kid snarks. “Did you notice the thing out there with multiple rows of razor sharp teeth?”

“Did you notice I’m paralyzed from the neck down in eight feet of water?”

“Okay!” The kid looks around, half-drowning Derek each time he strokes to keep them treading water. Oh, God, this is ridiculous. He’s barely half Derek’s size, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds including the soaking wet tracksuit. Derek is going to die. “I don’t see it,” he says, and starts to clumsily stroke towards the edge of the pool.

And of course, that’s when the motherfucking lizard shows up again.

“Wait, wait, wait, stop, stop.”

The lizard paces the edge of the pool, a bare ten feet away, staring at them and hissing.

“What’s it waiting for?” the voice next to his ear asks, like Derek is supposed to know.

It moves closer, to the edge of pool and reaches out a hand – claw? – to touch the water, only to recoil and retreat from the water.

“Wait, did you see that?” the kid asks. “I don’t think it can swim.”

Fantastic.

“What’s your name?” the kid asks a while later. “I can’t keep calling you Eyebrow Dude in my head.”

“Derek. Hale,” Derek adds after a second. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in this building, but he knows Laura, and he wouldn’t doubt that most people know her, too. Plus, his mother is the longest standing Alpha in Beacon Hills, and most people know of her, at least.

The kid is quiet for a moment. “Hale… as in Alpha Talia Hale? Are you related to her?”

“My mother,” Derek explains. “What’s yours?”

“What?”

“Your _name_.”

“Oh. Uh. Stiles.” He hesitates a moment. “It’s a nickname.”

“Figured,” Derek says tightly.

The kid talks, a lot, at first. Lots of hesitant, guarded questions, with some edge of excitement Derek doesn’t even begin to understand. It’s like he hasn’t talked to another person in a decade. But as the time passes, the questions grow briefer and longer apart, eventually fading to soft puffs of air and grunts.

“Okay,” Stiles says eventually. “Okay, I don’t think I can do this much longer.”

Derek glances at the kid, and follows his gaze to the edge of the pool and the phone sitting there.

“No, no, no,” he says sharply. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Would you just trust me?”

“No.”

“Hey, I’m the one keeping you alive, okay, have you noticed that?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, because that’s true, at least. “And when the paralysis wears off, who’s gonna be able to fight that thing, you or me?”

“So that’s why I’ve been holding you up the past two hours?” Stiles asks sceptically.

“Yup,” Derek says flatly. “You don’t know me. I don’t know you. But you need me to survive, which is why you’re _not_ letting me go.”

The kid – Stiles gives him this ridiculous look, something between guilt and hurt and sadness, before anger flashes hot behind his eyes. Then he shoves Derek’s arm off his shoulders.

“Stiles!” he half-shouts, before the water closes over his head again.

He sinks fast, dead-weight and still unable to twitch a finger. Then all he can do is wait. He holds his breath for as long as he can, trying to stare up through the water, waiting for – something. A cloud of blood, maybe, from the lizard-creature-thing attacking the kid, or worse. For the air to fade out of his lungs. And he stares for what feels like a century, lungs burning in his chest, until his head is about to explode, and finally his eyes close against the blackness scorching across his retinas.

Hands grab the front of his shirt, yanking until the arms they’re attached to can grab him around the waist, pulling him close as he’s dragged towards the surface.

The second his face hits the cool, he’s gasping in the deepest breaths he can, getting water in his mouth half the time from the way Stiles is accidentally dunking him until he gets his arms under Derek’s.

“I tried, I tried,” the kid blurts in his ear. “I think I got him. Oh, God.”

“Okay,” Derek manages, still gasping.

He’s not sure how much longer it is, but the kid starts slipping, and Derek’s face ends up under the water for longer than it has yet, chlorine stinging his eyes and nose until Stiles hauls him back up.

“I can’t – I can’t stay up any longer,” he says, sinking deeper into the water, and water rushes over Derek’s face until the kid frantically kicks his way up. “I need something to hold onto.”

He twists, and spots something that Derek can’t turn enough to see. Begins to splash through the water, until he stops, and Derek feels the lurch as he reaches.

And then they both sink.

When something grabs them, Derek has never felt more grateful to slam into the floor.

“Hi, Scott,” the kid says, sounding exhausted.

 

 

 

Derek is sitting in Chris Argent’s office. He’s just spent well over three hours total in a pool, and he’s never felt slimier.

“Of course, we offer our deepest apologies,” Argent says, sounding like he’s pulling teeth. “ _Alpha_ Hale.”

Derek has to grit his teeth to keep the words in his throat. “Of course,” he says, as closely to diplomatically as he can. “Mind telling me exactly why a kanima is wandering around ARGENT Industries? I’m sure,” he adds, “that my sister would also like to know, and my mother, too.”

“An unfortunate incident that it was released,” Argents says tightly. “One that won’t happen again.”

“Right,” Derek says, not even bothering to try and keep the disbelief from his voice. Then, almost without thinking, he ends up looking at the kid in the corner again – Stiles. An android, Argent had said carelessly, and Derek had had to smooth the surprise from his face. He almost could have sworn the kid – the android looked… disappointed. He’d seemed… not human, exactly. His scent had been off, although with all the chlorine it’d been hard to pinpoint it, but Derek wasn’t exactly one to talk with the human thing, so he’d not thought much of it. An android, though? That could carry on a conversation like a person? “What’s his model?”

“It’s experimental.” Argent shrugs. “Pet project of one of my inventors. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess. As I was saying, we offer our deepest apologies, and would like to offer you a complimentary gift for the inconvenience.”

“I’m good,” Derek mutters.

“Well, keep it in mind,” Argent says, and presses a button on his comm system. “Is Stilinski here yet for the 5T1?”

Okay, the kid is shivering. ‘Droid.

“Can he get cold?” Derek finds himself asking.

“Of course not,” Argent replies sharply. “Sensory processing is not something we are capable of.”

Derek narrows his eyes at the kid. Android. _Stiles_. “Are you cold?”

Stiles’ eyes go wide, and he speaks after a pause. “My core temperature has dropped quite severely,” he says, slowly, and much more carefully than he spoke when he was peppering Derek with questions in the pool.

Derek rolls his eyes and shoves to his feet, grabbing the blanket Argent’s assistant had given him from the arm of the chair. He’s soaked, still, and with no dry clothes in his gym bag, it looks like he’s gonna stay that way a while. Werewolf, though, so he’s pretty much back to his normal temperature. By contrast, when he wraps a hand around Stiles’ wrist, his skin is cold, much colder than it was earlier.

“Sit,” he says bluntly, and shoves the kid – ’droid –  into his chair. Wraps the blanket roughly around him.

“Thank you,” Stiles says quietly.

Derek nods at Chris Argent. “I’ll remember your offer,” he says. “Good night.”

And he walks out the door, closing it sharply behind him.

The next thing he’s know, a kid who smells like a fucking puppy jumps in front of him. Scott, Derek remembers Stiles saying vaguely, the one who ended up fighting off the kanima because Derek was half-drowned, exhausted, and still pretty numb. He must be newly bitten. The energy alone leaking off him is only adding to how tired Derek is already.

“You can’t tell anyone about him,” Scott says, low and frantic. “You can’t talk about Stiles to anyone, okay?”

“What?”

“He’s–” Scott glances around. “He’s not like the others. He’s special. So you can’t tell anyone about him.”

About an android? ARGENT Industries specialises in them. What’s the big deal about this one?

The door slams open before Derek can say anything. Scott looks over his shoulder, and his eyes go wide. “Dr. Stilinski,” he says, relief clear in his voice.

“Thanks for staying, Scott,” the doctor says, patting a hand against Scott’s shoulder as he walks into Argent’s office without waiting to be buzzed in.

Derek gives a long look at Scott as the door closes behind Stilinski. “Why?”

“He’s…” Scott shakes his head. “I can’t tell you, okay? But he’s special, and people can’t know about him.”

Derek frowns and shamelessly eavesdrops into Argent’s office. Stiles is quiet, but Stilinski is talking in low, tense tones. He ignores that, though, because he can hear the heartbeats in the room. Two average human heartbeats, and one – one that’s different. A little faster, a little strange.

“He has a heart?” he says to Scott, his voice barely audible.

Scott swallows, looking around again, before leaning forward. “He grew it.”

Holy shit.

Derek stares at nothing for a minute, listening to that fluttering beat.

Then he nods to himself, and turns, striding back into Argent’s office.

“I changed my mind,” he says, ignoring the shocked looks from all three occupants in the office, and isn’t _that_ interesting, from Stiles? “I do want something.”

“Ah – okay,” Argent says, blinking. “And…”

“I want him,” Derek says, and jerks his chin at Stiles.

 

 

 

This is officially the weirdest thing Derek has ever done. And Stiles may just be the weirdest android Derek has ever... met? Seen? They’re supposed to be… different. He’s never met one that could pass for human, not even the super-realistic ones ARGENT Industries makes. Those certainly _look_ human, smooth and non-offensive, but they don’t – they don’t smell like blood and flesh, and they certainly don’t have heartbeats.

He’s led through a laboratory by the doctor - Stilinski - and Stiles who looks like he’s barely hold in a chatter of words. Off to the side of it is what looks like it used to be a supply room, maybe, with a cot and posters on the wall.

“It’s late,” Derek says after a long, awkward pause. “He can – you can just pack what you need for the night,” he says to Stiles. It’s too weird to ignore him when he’s _right there_ , all strange, fluttering heart and scent that isn’t human, but isn’t right for an android, either. “You can get the rest tomorrow. Ah.” He clears his throat. “Dr. Stilinski, maybe you could come with us and make sure that the set-up for him is okay?”

“Alright,” the doctor says, sounding surprised. “I have a few things I need to wrap up here first, though.”

Derek programs his address into a tablet that’s pressed into his hands, and by the time he’s done, Stiles is bouncing up to him with a stuffed-near-to-bursting backpack on his shoulder.

“Where do you live?” Stiles asks without prompting.

“Old Town,” Derek says after a minute.

“He’s never been there,” the doctor murmurs, picking a jacket up off a mess of clothing on the floor, and handing it to the kid. “You have everything you need?”

Stiles nods. “Can we go?”

The car has his home address programmed in, and Derek almost talks himself into letting it drive them home, but then he’d have to find something to do with his hands, would have to look at Stiles, and in the end, he decides to drive just to avoid that.

“Alpha Hale?”

“Derek,” he corrects without thinking. “For the love of gods, it’s just Derek.”

“Oh.”

Derek glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “What?”

“Thanks.”

Oh, gods and goddesses. Stiles is _thanking_ him. For all he knows, Derek is one of those people who rely on androids and robots for sexual contact. And there’s nothing wrong with that anymore than vibrators, really, because no matter how complicated androids are, they’re _programs_. Stiles – is he sentient? He has fucking _heart_. That he apparently grew. In a Petri dish? Or inside… him? How does an android grow a heart?

Derek is going to throw up.

He barely manages to calm down when he reaches the apartment, and shows Stiles the elevator. He seems fascinated by everything, and runs his fingers over the walls, the doorknobs, everything. Lights up when Derek lets him press the touchscreen of the elevator controls, and choose the floor.

“I have a spare bedroom,” Derek says as he opens the door to his apartment. “It’s a little messy, but there’s a television and… I don’t know what you need, honestly,” he admits, showing Stiles down the hall. He opens the guest bedroom, and touches the light pad so it comes on. “This is it, I guess.”

Stiles inches his toes over the threshold. “Is there an outlet?”

His voice is low, hesitant. Almost like he’s shy.

“Next to the bed where the lamp is,” Derek says. “And another next to the dresser. I’ll, um, let you settle in.”

When he leaves, Stiles is sitting on the side of the bed, pressing his palm into the mattress.

 

 

 

Derek makes coffee for Dr. Stilinski. Partly because the man looks like he could use some caffeine, but also because it’s been drilled into his head that he should offer guests drinks since he was a kid. His father was always of the opinion that tea made everything better.

He sets cream and sugar on the table, and sits across from Stilinski. “So. What the hell is he?”

“He’s an android,” Stilinski says carefully. “He’s just… a little buggy sometimes.”

“He has a heartbeat,” Derek says flatly. “You know I can hear that.”

“Oh, jeez.” Stilinski sighs, pressing his palm against his forehead. “I – he _is_ an android. He was an experiment in organic matter and its use in robotics, particularly with an eye towards the improvement of the link between prosthetics and owner.”

Derek raises an eyebrow, stirring cream and sugar into his coffee. Organic matter, huh. He’s not sure whether that’s a euphemism for donations to science, or for grown in a Petri dish like hamburger meat. “And where it exactly did the heart come from?”

“I have no idea,” Stilinski admits. “He mentioned feeling something strange in his chest one day, and when we scanned him, there it was.”

Gods.

“Argent doesn’t trust you.” Derek takes a sip of his coffee, makes a face, and adds a little more sugar. “And you don’t trust me. And I don’t trust any of you. So I’m not gonna tell you not to lie to me.”

Stilinski is staring at him when Stiles bounces – there’s no other word for it, really – into the kitchen, skidding to a halt next to the kitchen table.

“Dr. S!” he blurts. “I have a room and it is _awesome_.”

Derek cleans up, listening with half an ear to the sound of Stiles showing off his new room to the doctor. Hearing, really, more than listening. It’s not a big apartment, and he can’t help being aware of people in his home. He sounds happy, Derek thinks, frowning into the sink. It’s a cluttered, slightly dusty spare room. It shouldn’t make anyone that happy, let alone an android that shouldn’t technically have emotions.

After a bit, it shifts to the doctor talking, in a low, serious voice that Derek deliberately doesn’t listen to the specifics of. It sounds too private.

Stilinski leaves not long after that.

Before he does, though, Derek offers, “Tomorrow I could bring him in to pick up the rest of his things. So he’s comfortable here.”

After a long moment, the doctor nods.

When he leaves, Derek checks the locks and the security system. He knows it would tell him if something was wrong, but he feels better about checking them himself. Probably it’s a little paranoid at this point – it’s been seven years – but considering the circumstances, he’s not real hard on himself. It’s been a long decade.

For some reason, he finds himself stopping outside of Stiles’ door. The guest room, he knows he should call it, but it feels like it belongs to the kid already.

Derek knocks lightly, waiting until he hears a noise to open the door. “You have everything you need?”

Stiles is sitting on the side of the bed again, running his palms over the comforter. He looks small and uncertain. Lost.

“You can get in the bed if you want,” Derek says carefully. “Make yourself comfortable. Tomorrow,” he adds when Stiles doesn’t say anything, the silence suddenly unbearable, “We’ll go get whatever else you need. You don’t have to stay in here, either. You can go anywhere you want in the apartment.”

“I’ve never spent the night anywhere but the lab,” Stiles murmurs. “I don’t…”

“What do you do there?” Derek asks.

Stiles looks up, but doesn’t meet his eyes. He seems to be thinking, frowning just a little. “I have clothes for the night,” he says eventually. “Looser. I clean anything I need to clean, then change into them, and get my bed ready. I have a pillow and a blanket even though the lab’s usually warm enough because Lydia says blankets are nice.”

He sounds like he’s reciting each sentence, something that’s been said to him, maybe. His heart is fluttering its odd, delicate beat.

“Okay.” Derek opens the door wider. “The bathroom is down at the end of the hall.”

Derek hears the water run while Stiles in the bathroom, but he tries to focus on… pretty much anything else. It feels like such an invasion of his privacy. Bad enough Derek keeps hearing his heartbeat, when he probably doesn’t even want anyone to know he _has_ one. Not like Derek can help that. When Stiles comes back, he smells like soap and clean skin, and a little like mint. Derek’s curious, he’ll admit, but he’s not going to prod about someone’s hygiene rituals. He’s also dressed in pajama pants and a thin, loose T-shirt. It looks soft against his skin.

“Could I get something out of the closet in here?” Derek asks impulsively. He has an idea.

“It’s your house.”

“And this is _your_ room.”

“Oh – okay.”

Only when Stiles has nodded does Derek cross the threshold, going to the closet and opening it. He takes a large, warm blanket down from the top shelf and throws it onto the foot of the bed. The bedrooms in his apartment have climate control, of course, but… well, Stiles said it earlier. Blankets are nice, and the nights have been getting cool as summer comes to an end. After a second, he takes out another thing, and adds it to the bed.

“The remote for the TV is in the drawer of the nightstand here,” he says as Stiles walks towards the bed. “Climate next to the lights. It’s synced to the rest of the apartment, but you can change it if you want.” He moves over to it, next to the door. “Light levels, white noise. Or you can use that lamp.”

Stiles turns it on without looking, and after a second’s hesitation, Derek turns the ceiling lights off. The room goes soft, muted.

“You can get under the covers,” Derek says, because Stiles is staring at the bed, and only then does he pull them back, and sit on the side of the bed, bare toes curling in the rug next to the bed.

After a second, Stiles reaches over and picks up the stuffed wolf Derek set out. “Who’s this guy?”

“My sister Cora stays with me sometimes.” Derek smiles just a touch. “She’s twelve now, but I moved out when she was five, and for some reason, she missed me, so she started coming over and spending a night or a weekend hanging out here.”

The baby of the family. Always wanting to grow up fast and catch up with the other kids, but the oldest of her generation of cousins. Stuck right in the middle, and Derek moving out when she was so little. He wanted to actually know who she was, and it was fun for her to come into the city for a little trip. Plus he’d been so… terrible those first few years, and having a five year old around made him have to put effort into being a little less so.

“She’d miss our mom, though,” he continues after a moment. “So I found her that, so she’d have a friend to keep her company at night.”

Stiles pulls the wolf against his chest, and nods.

“Okay.” Derek hesitates at the door. “You need anything else?”

“No.” Stiles looks at him, gives a small smile. “Thanks.”

Derek leaves, but he feels weird about it, and he lies in bed for a long time questioning why.

 

 

 

Something is on fire.

Derek is out of bed before he’s even fully awake, and in the kitchen a second later, heart pounding, throat tight, and his stomach twisted.

“What is your _problem_?” Stiles is saying when Derek skids into the kitchen. Saying… to the stove? “Do you have something against eggs?”

“It’s temperamental. Been meaning to get it fixed,” Derek manages, and falls into a chair. His knees are like jelly, and a cold sweat has broken out across his bare back.

“It’s _rude_ ,” Stiles declares, glaring at the stovetop.

“What are you _doing_?” Derek asks, and his voice is rougher than he means it to be.

Stiles is quiet for a long moment. “It’s morning. It’s been – it’s been more than eight hours.”

He looks deflated. His face is towards the wall, but Derek can see it in the slump of his shoulders, the way his head bows, and he feels like he accidentally kicked a puppy. Or, worse, that feeling when you accidentally hurt a dog and then _they_ act sorry.

“Okay.” Derek rubs his face, stubble rasping across his palm. “Breakfast. Eggs?”

Stiles gives the tiniest nod.

“You’re gonna need a new pan.” Derek stands up and crosses over to where Stiles is standing. “Fresh start. And coffee.”

The coffee helps clear the last lingering traces of panic from Derek’s brain, especially when he turns on the fan over the range and the smell of smoke fades, to be replaced by the smell of food and coffee.

“Do you eat?” Derek asks curiously as he’s dishing eggs onto a plate.

Stiles shrugs. “I can if I want. I have a functioning digestive system.”

“…okay.” He nods at the cupboard where the plates are. “You want to have breakfast with me?”

He’s never seen anyone’s face light up like that.

The kid – because that’s what Derek’s brain has deemed him, and really, what’s the point in fighting it at this point? – eats in a manner that is frankly horrifying. He loses food on the trip from plate to mouth, waves his fork around like he’s trying to catch something on it, talks with his mouth full. But he also eats like someone who hasn’t tasted food in weeks.

“I think I have tastebuds now,” Stiles says at one point, as Derek slips another piece of toast onto his plate. “I don’t think I did the last time I tried food.”

“Right.” Derek takes another drink of coffee. “You grew tastebuds.”

His heartbeat flutters, fast and shallow, and Stiles nods.

Right.

 

 

 

“He has tastebuds,” Derek says, his head in his hands.

“Huh.” Stilinski taps something into a tablet. “That’s new.”

“He has _tastebuds_.”

“Well, there must be some benefit to them,” Stilinski says absently. “You know, children taste bitter things more strongly than adults. There's a theory it was once a defence mechanism against poisons.”

“He likes scrambled eggs,” Derek mumbles. “With ketchup.”

Stilinski pauses. Then he sets the tablet down, and takes his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He exhales. “What do you need to know?”

Where the hell did the heart come from? Does he get embarrassed? He’d seemed… shy, last night, about whatever he needed to do before bed. Does he have emotions? How exactly did a scientist working for ARGENT create a sentient android? Because Derek can’t – Derek can’t deny that he is very, very sentient. Does he feel _pain_?

Derek looks at Stilinski, and thinks about Argents, thinks about recording devices slipped into his bags and clothing, lipstick stains on his skin. Outside, he can hear Stiles goofing around with the intern Scott, making sarcastic remarks and laughing, and under that noise, that fragile, fluttering heartbeat.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Derek asks roughly.

Stilinski levels a sharp look at him. “Why did you ask Argent for him?”

Derek leans back against the couch. Shrugs. “He saved my life,” he says carefully. “Figured I’d return the favour.”

 

 

 

“You have everything you need?”

Stiles chews his bottom lip. “I think so.”

He doesn’t really have much, Derek noticed as he helped load the few bags and boxes into his car. A tote bag of clothes, a box of cords and other electronic things that Derek doesn’t look too closely at – it seems rude, for some reason – two boxes of personal items.

“Well, if you forgot anything, you can get it tomorrow,” Derek says.

Stiles stares at him. “What?”

Actually, everyone seems to be staring at him and that’s – a little disconcerting, really. Stilinski looks flat-out shocked, and the intern Scott is staring at him with his crooked jaw hanging open.

“You…” Derek frowns. “You still have work to do here, don’t you?” he asks, and he’s talking to Stiles despite himself. Stiles _is_ the work, he knows he should think, probably ridiculously expensive to create, but he also seems to have several projects on the go that he couldn’t figure out how to pack. “I mean, it’s not like you can commute, but I can drop you off in the morning, and pick you up at the end of the day.”

“I don’t know, maybe he could,” Scott says, grabbing the clothing bag. He digs through it quickly, then shoves a baseball cap onto Stiles’ head. A moment later, he’s digging through his own nearby desk and comes up with a pair of sunglasses to add. “We could totally pass you off as human.”

“Lot weirder things on public transportation than him,” Derek drawls.

Stiles has a nice laugh, Derek learns, loud and uncontrolled.

The mood is a lot lighter after that. Stiles and Scott fool around, smacking each other and basically acting like five year olds, while Stilinski shakes his head. A note of relief moves over his face, though, and Derek thinks he’s making the right choice. A half hour of his day won’t kill him, especially since he doesn’t work, and, hey, maybe he’ll go up once in a while and bother Laura.

By the time he has Stiles in the car with all his stuff, the kid is hiding a smile in the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“You don’t have much for clothing,” Derek notes.

“There are machines in the lab,” Stiles says. “I’m supposed to keep my clothes clean.”

“You want to go get some more?”

It’s impulsive, and probably a horrible idea. People send their ’droids shopping all the time, sure. Errands, or sometimes clothing for the ’droids. The more humanoid they appear, the stranger it is to see them walking around naked. Like having a naked Ken doll wandering around the grocery store. But Stiles is… different. And people don’t always handle different well. Stiles doesn’t deserve that.

But maybe… well. He needs more clothing. And, fuck, if it goes that badly, Derek will drop a fang or flash his eyes and really freak people out.

Derek’s not a huge fan of the mall. Flashing ads, overtired crying children, too much perfume, those stores that are entirely candles and scented bath stuff, it’s all just a little much for werewolf senses. But stand-alone stores, he thinks, would mean a little too much attention, unless he took him to Walmart or something. Stiles looks almost college-aged, and he’ll probably blend better in a mall.

Plus he seems like he enjoys it, craning his head around to take everything in. Derek suspects he… doesn’t get out much, to put it kindly.

“Find a store you like,” he finally has to say, after they’ve been wandering for a good ten minutes.

Derek hates shopping. He only really does because his clothes ends up bloody or worse. Cora’s not much better, unless it comes to the bookstore with actual, paper books he takes her to a couple times a year, and he’s as bad as she is. It’s a long drive, though, almost an hour away. Laura’s a bit of a clothes horse, but he’s pretty sure she gave up on him years ago.

The kid’s excitement is… contagious. He touches different fabric with hesitant fingers, looks at everything, and doesn’t seem to know how to choose.

“I’ve never bought myself anything,” he says, softly. “Except for books or music, and I only get giftcards sometimes.”

Derek holds out a T-shirt. “Why don’t you try some stuff on, see what you like?”

For a while, he watches Stiles shop. He flits from rack to rack, touching everything and only choosing one or two things at most. There’s some criteria in his head that he’s working with, Derek thinks, and he’ll never be able to figure out what that criteria is. But no matter what it is, it puts a fierce look of concentration on his face, and Derek wonders at how expressive that face is. All bright whiskey eyes and soft pink mouth that moves quick and easy.

So he has a strange little… cyborg? Android? He’s still not entirely sure what to call Stiles. He has a strange little creature made out of plastic and metal and… probably a lot of other stuff that Derek doesn’t know well enough to name… and that heart, alongside a fair amount of flesh. He likes scrambled eggs, seems to have an alarming fondness for plaid blossoming in the pile of clothing he’s amassing, and Derek apparently is keeping him.

“Do you like your room?” he asks the next time Stiles comes out to prod him for his opinion about his clothing. “You can get some stuff for it, if you want.”

 

 

 

Derek can’t sleep. He’s feeling… off. Anxious, maybe. He’s spent enough time with his therapist trying to figure out triggers and coping methods and more, but he can’t pinpoint anything tonight. There’s just a tightness in his chest he can’t explain, and a sense of restlessness that won’t leave him be.

He rolls over onto his back, and sighs. No, this is ridiculous. He needs to at least get up and fix his tangled sheets, because he’s never going to be able to sleep twisted up like this. He’s a little more particular about how his bed is when he tries to sleep than he cares to admit, and taps on the lamp next to the bed to the lowest setting to smooth the sheets out, fluff the pillows, shake out the blankets. And then he can’t bring himself to get back into that nice tidy bed only to toss and turn more.

Muttering a few choice words, he drags himself away from his bed and changes into running clothes. Before he leaves, though, he pauses outside Stiles’ door. There’s rarely anyone here for nights like this. Cora once in a while, but he won’t leave her alone in the apartment, so he deals other ways. Running isn’t always an option, so he does have other coping methods, but he _wants_ to go for a run, and… there’s no reason he can’t.

But while he’s trying to convince himself there’s no reason he can’t leave, he inadvertently hears the sound of the television from inside.

After a long moment, he taps lightly on the door, just hard enough to be heard, but not hard enough to wake… huh.

“Come in,” Stiles says after a moment.

He’s changed the climate settings since Derek’s last been in the room. It’s a touch warmer than Derek keeps the rest of the apartment, especially for night, and he has the lights down low. Stiles himself is sitting up against the headboard, but hidden up to his mid-chest with covers.

Derek stays near the door. “I was thinking about going for a run. You’ll be okay while I’m gone?”

Stiles nods.

“I’ll be gone about an hour,” he says, then… hesitates. “Do you sleep?”

“I have a sleep mode,” Stiles replies, looking at him with huge eyes. “I need time to recharge, or my power supply can become rundown.”

Derek nods, hesitates. “Don’t feel like you’re obligated to stay in here. You can go anywhere in the apartment you want.”

Then he leaves, and it’s not until he’s in the woods warming up for a good, hard run that he realizes he never really got an answer about whether Stiles sleeps or not.

 

 

Derek drops Stiles off at ARGENT in the morning, same as he’s been doing every day for the last week. Walks the kid in because he doesn’t trust the way ARGENT people look at him. People talk to him like he’s… like he doesn’t understand them, or, worse, like their words can’t affect him. And Derek knows, to anyone else he’s just another android, without emotions or thoughts, and it’s better for people to think that. That’s what they try to convince people, with Stiles going more formal and acting more like a typical ‘droid.

But they’ve never heard him laugh. If they did, they’d never believe it.

What he’s not expecting, though, is for Stilinski to pull him aside. Stilinski generally isn’t available when Stiles arrives. The lab they work in is small, barely more than a single room and the tiny broom closet that used to be Stiles’ bedroom. The two interns, Lydia and Scott, both go in and out throughout the day between other projects.

 _A pet project_ , Argent had said, and the evidence of that is everywhere. Derek’s just not sure why. Yet.

“Come for a walk with me, Derek,” Stilinski says, patting Stiles’ shoulder as he passes.

Derek has the strangest feeling of meeting a prom date’s parents for the first time. It’s a ridiculous feeling, but he remembers, suddenly, the girl he was absolutely in love with in high school, Paige, who he took to his junior prom, and meeting her moms while he was an absolute ball of nerves. She was beautiful, far smarter than him, and broke his heart to pieces by moving away the following summer. He can’t remember her with anything but fondness, though, because they were never meant to be, but he loved her very much, and their relationship was good.

He has a picture of them at prom along with a few others from their time together, and good memories from before Kate happened, and he lost himself so badly. For the most part, though, he doesn’t think about his high school sweetheart more than the average person does, and the rush of memory of prom night surprises him.

“You bought him some new clothes, I see,” Stilinski says as they walk through the lobby of the building.

“He seemed to need some more,” Derek says carefully. “He picked them out himself.”

“Really?” Stilinski asks, sounding surprised. They’re further away from the building, but he glances around, then nods down the street. “There’s a park down the street. Nice place to sit and talk.”

Derek can take a hint, and stays quiet until they’re in that park, winding up on a bench surrounded by huge, overgrown trees.

Stilinski takes a small blue box and sets it between them, then presses a button on it. There’s no sound, exactly, but there’s _something_ that makes goosebumps break out across Derek’s skin, and a low, dull ache appear at the base of his skull.

“Blocks signals,” Stilinski says by way of explanation. “Stiles is… his funding comes from my personal accounts. ARGENT allows us to use their facilities in exchange for any information we find in our experiments with him.” He gives Derek a long look. “So you understand that they can’t know anything important.”

They’d want to use him, Derek realizes with a sick feeling. Change the fun, casual experiments that he looks forward to each day, that are more like games, or maybe school for him. Probably take away Lydia and Scott, who Stiles thinks are his friends and who, as far as Derek can tell, do indeed respect and care for him, but who are both interns with other responsibilities, and unimportant to ARGENT.

“No,” Derek agrees.

No. They won’t hear a word from him.

“He’s different than you expect, isn’t he?” Stilinski says.

“Doctor–”

“John,” Stilinski interrupts. “John’s fine.”

Derek nods. “I can honestly say he’s nothing like what I would have ever expected.”

John gives him a long look. “I was also hoping to ask you for a favour.”

 

 

 

Around lunch, Derek peeks in at Stiles, scanning the ID card he’d been given a few days ago to get past the security system. He doesn’t interrupt, but watches for a few minutes. Scott and Stiles are working together, and it’s so different than their usual interactions. They’re both serious, Scott with his paper that Derek knows isn’t cheap, and Stiles with electrodes across his forehead. One of his eyes is lit up, electric golden, and Derek leaves before he’s seen, feeling like he’s intruding.

He takes a lunch upstairs, surprising Laura.

It’s something he hasn’t done in… God, he doesn’t even remember. She doesn’t seem to either, by the shock on her face when she sees him.

“Brought you a sandwich,” he says. “Turkey, no mayo.”

They don’t talk about anything in particular, even though he can tell she’s dying to ask about the rumours even he’s heard. She’s cut her hair, something short and choppy, and put red streaks in it. When he asks about it, she said she had it done almost two months ago. That probably says about everything regarding how bad he’s been about being her brother, being family, being pack.

She looks better, though, since the last time he saw her.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she says when he has to finally leave, longer than her lunch break should have been. “We miss you, Der. Cora misses you.”

That’s kind of like being kicked in the stomach.

“I know,” he says, quietly. “Soon. Give – tell everyone I love them, okay?”

He lets her hug him partly because he’s pretty sure if he didn’t, she’d put him in a headlock, Alpha or not, and that might possibly be more embarrassing than when he was twelve and she was fourteen and six inches taller than him.

After that, he has to duck into a bathroom and take a couple moments to breathe. He’s spent months working on this with Marion, his therapist, because his mother may not be his Alpha anymore, but she’s still his mother and he has a healthy amount of fear of her, and she could see what was happening in his brain better than he could. It’s still… hard, though. After everything that happened.

But he has something to do, so he pulls himself together the best he can. He has a plan, and a goal. He has a separate security card that he’s not allowed to know the details of other than it should get him into just almost any place he wants to be, and a list of random supplies to pretend to be searching for.

Because somewhere under the small of electronics, disinfectant, and gun oil, is that reptilian scent of the kanima, and Derek is going to find out why.

He decides to explore what public areas he can first without raising suspicion, starting on Laura’s floor and working his way down. The public access areas are unlikely to hold anything hidden, but he familiarizes himself with the building in doing it.

What shocks him is that, three floors below ground level, he finds a _morgue_. What the hell?

There’s someone in there, too. He can hear their heartbeat, fast and desperate with panic, and that’s what convinces him to go in.

He finds a girl inside, young and blonde and very upset, sitting in one of the corners of the room. The room, thankfully, smells like cleaning supplies, and nothing more. Derek has two sisters, numerous cousins, and he absolutely hates dealing with crying people. For some reason, though, the littlest cousins in his family tend to run to him with scraped knees and hurt feelings, probably because he’s the one most likely to let them sit on him until they feel better.

So he crouches down in front of the girl, not too close so he doesn’t crowd her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says through her teeth, staring off to the side. Her eyes are unfocused, though, and she’s pale, trembling.

“What’s your name?” he asks gently, gives her a moment to answer. When she doesn’t, he says, “I’m Derek.”

“Erica,” she says. “I have a headache. It’s just a headache.”

She smells off, though. Sharp, somehow.

A second later, she starts seizing.

“ _Shit_ ,” Derek mutters and carefully moves her away from the wall so she doesn’t hit it and injure herself, stripping off his jacket and slipping it under her head. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he soothes, checking the time on his phone as he phones the first number he thinks of – Laura. She answers quickly, reassures him she’s on her way, and hangs up.

It’s the longest three minutes of his life until the seizure eases to a stop. Derek checks the girl’s breathing, but it seems okay, so he moves her onto her side, saying a silent thanks to the instructor of his first aid course.

“Erica, can you hear me?” he asks, tilting her head back gently so it’s easier for her to breathe. He glances around and finds a set of keys on the floor where he’d been sitting. There’s a card on it with instructions and he’s glad to see he’s doing okay. “You had a seizure,” he says, talking more to reassure himself than anything else. “You just rest for a little bit, okay? I’ll stay here with you.”

She starts to come back to herself some, but he’s incredibly glad when someone else takes over the first aid stuff.

Surprisingly, though, it’s Scott the intern.

“I'm pre-med and my mom’s a nurse,” he says in explanation, checking Erica’s pulse. “I’m Scott McCall, by the way,” he says to her. “Your heart is racing pretty fast, so we’re gonna call an ambulance, okay?”

Derek stays until the paramedics arrive, holding her hand when she reaches out for him.

“I’m gonna go to the hospital,” Scott says after the ambulance leaves. Derek’s sitting on a bench in the lobby with his arms on his knees. “My mom’s on shift anyways. You want me to let you know how everything is?”

Derek nods vaguely.

“Do you know her?” a familiar voice asks as Scott’s footsteps fade. A moment later, Stiles sits on the bench next to him, close enough to feel the warmth from his body.

Derek shakes his head. “No, I just ran into her before it started. I just… humans are so fucking delicate,” he bursts out, and then has to drop his head between his knees for a long moment. “And _breakable_.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before Stiles carefully touches his back, resting a light hand there. It’s far, far more soothing than it should be, but Derek leans into the touch regardless.

 

 

 

“I haven’t found anything,” he says to his mother over the phone. “No sign of the kanima since the first day.”

“Gerard’s been in town,” she says. “Since Kate’s funeral.”

Derek very deliberately takes his hands off the counter edge where it’s biting into his palms before he dents it, and presses them flat against the top. “Okay,” he manages, then, “I think you told me that?”

“I tried, pup,” she says, gently. “You were hurting too much to hear.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I don’t trust any Argent,” his mother says flatly. “And probably Gerard least of all. You be careful there, Derek.”

“I wouldn’t go near that thing on my own. Laura’s always there, and there’s another wolf in the building. Scott McCall, have you heard of him? Not sure who bit him.”

“No. You talk to him, see if he has a pack taking care of him.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She doesn’t keep him on the phone much longer, thankfully. One of the wonderful things about his mother is she knows her children, and she knows that he’s not going to be keep up conversation for much longer after that subject. He hangs up, and stays where he is for a long few moments, breathing slowly.

“Rogue Alpha,” Stiles says, and Derek jumps. One thing about Stiles’ odd heartbeat is that it’s very hard to track how far he is away by it, and Derek had been too distracted to listen to his footsteps or anything else. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but… Scott was bit by a rogue Alpha a few months ago. No pack. I helped him through his first few full moons.”

Derek glances at him.

Stiles shrugs, cautiously moving closer. “I’m good at research,” he says simply. “Who’s Kate?”

Derek sighs. For a moment, he looks at Stiles. The shirt he’s wearing is too large, maybe second-hand judging by how worn it looks. He changed as soon as they got home, out of the jeans he’d been wearing, too, and into slightly too-short pajama pants. Derek can’t stand wearing socks most of the time, and, to be honest, he has days where he’d rather wear fur than clothing, so he can’t fault the kid the outfit.

He pats the counter. “Hop up here.”

That gets him a very curious look, but after a moment Stiles obeys.

Derek takes a deep breath and starts getting out bowls and flour and yeast.

“Are you making something?” Stiles asks curiously.

“Bread.”

If he’s going to talk about this, he needs to be doing something, and the kneading will probably be therapeutic. The feeling of dough under his hands is soothing, and smacking it around may help his mood. And if not… at least there’ll be bread.

“Kate Argent.” He gets the yeast in some warm water with sugar, and sets it to the side. “Chris’ sister. I met her when I was sixteen and she was twenty-two. I thought I loved her – I thought she loved me.”

Stiles frowns, playing with a little flour on the counter that’s spilled. “I thought that was illegal in California. Isn’t it only supposed to be up to three years when someone’s under eighteen?”

Derek focuses on the bowl of flour and doesn’t look at Stiles. “Yes. But something being illegal doesn’t always mean that people don’t do it anyways.”

“Oh,” Stiles says softly. “Derek–”

“Don’t,” he says, too sharply, because Stiles’ face looks stunned when he catches a glimpse of him. He feels like an ass immediately, and wishes he – wishes he was a better person, wishes his broken edges weren’t so sharp that they hurt others as often as they hurt him. “This is hard for me,” he continues after a moment, forcing himself to speak softly. “I don’t – I don’t  know how to explain this to you. I don’t understand your brain – do you have a brain?”

“I have a very complicated brain, Derek,” Stiles says very solemnly.

That has the unexpected effect of making Derek laugh, harder than he expects.

“You also have flour on your nose,” he says impulsively, tapping a flour covered finger against the up-tilted pixie nose in question, leaving a smudge of white behind. The outrageous expression on Stiles’ face is worth it.

Derek starts to mix ingredients together.

“It is illegal.” He puts down a measuring cup too hard on the counter, making himself wince. “It’s illegal and it wasn’t healthy and there was nothing good about it because she didn’t love me, or – she used me. To get into my family’s house and learn our secrets.”

“Why?” Stiles asks carefully.

“To kill us.” Derek turns the dough out on counter, and begins to knead it. “We had a – do you know the Wolf Moon? It’s the first full moon of January, of the year.”

“It’s celebrated,” Stiles says, but he’s frowning. “But werewolves can’t be persecuted like that. Even the rogue that bit Scott, they couldn’t just _murder_ him.”

Derek takes a moment to really look at Stiles. There’s still flour on his nose, now smeared across his cheek from his attempts to wipe it away. His shirt is half falling off his shoulder, showing pale skin and moles that match the ones on his face. And that face looks positively shocked. Heartbroken.

“No, you’re right,” Derek says, more softly than he could have earlier. “She was a bad person who wanted to hurt us because she didn’t think we were… human, or people, or something, I don’t even know. Maybe she actually thought we were monsters. But it doesn’t really matter why, just that she did it.” He takes a deep breath. “During the Wolf Moon my family comes together and celebrates and the little kids run around in the woods and the teenagers think it’s really cheesy but they get roped into it watching the kids anyways, and the adults all get drunk around a bonfire.”

Family to a tee, really.

“Our house is the biggest so everyone stays with us and Kate decided to use the time when we were all together to try to burn our house down with us inside.”

He expects Stiles to say something. Can hear his shallow heartbeat racing even faster than usual. But he says nothing, and that helps.

“My uncle Peter was the only one home, though,” Derek continues. “The fire… he was catatonic for a long time, and when he woke up, all he had left in him was rage.”

The fire burned away everything good in Peter, everything that made him… him. His mother had trusted Peter little before the fire – he was strange, not always very kind, the type to spy on people and use that information against them – but lost even that after. Even in the months where he was supposed to be recovering and healing, Derek saw how she didn’t trust him. How she took away the memories of Peter’s wife and his daughter Malia from everyone, giving them both room to be safe away from Peter.

Evelyn remarried, a good man named Henry Tate, and Malia has a sister, and she’s a happy kid. A little older than Cora, getting to know their family again now that it’s safe for everyone to know who she is and where she lives. Now that Peter can’t get near them.

“He killed Kate and got his revenge, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted power.” Derek folds and stretches dough, folds and stretches. “He killed someone, an Alpha, and went after my mother for… for more power. The Hale line is very old, and the head of it is strong. My mom wasn’t there, though, it was just me and Laura.”

“Did you kill him?” Stiles asks, very quietly.

Derek takes his hands out of the dough before he pounds it into an inedible state. “When an Alpha dies, the power often passes down in the family. She’s – his daughter Malia is only fourteen. She couldn’t have handled it. Laura was hurt, and I… he needed to be stopped.” He tosses the bread dough into the bowl, and covers it in plastic. Laughs at himself, a not very nice sound. “Laura would have been a better Alpha. I don’t even have a pack.”

Stiles sneaks under the plastic and steals a pinch of raw dough. “Maybe you need a pack,” he says, and chews thoughtfully on his dough.

Something clicks in the back of Derek’s head. He gets out a cloth and begins cleaning the counter, frowning.

“Could I run something by you?” he asks slowly.

 

 

 

The night is easier than most, harder than some. He has some trouble falling asleep, but gets there in the end, and doesn’t have nightmares. When he wakes up, it’s morning, and the sun is shining through the windows. No noxious fog today, then, he thinks, stretching his feet out into the cool corners of the sheet. Maybe he’ll go for a run in the woods, just because he can, and it’s a nice day.

After a moment, he realizes there’s soft music coming from his kitchen, along with the smell of something really delicious… bacon, he thinks.

Derek gives another good stretch, and gets up, moving quietly. He’s curious, and it’s cats that shouldn’t be curious, not wolves, isn’t it?

There is a very strange little android dancing in his pajamas in Derek’s kitchen. He’s not a very good dancer, honestly, seeming to rely largely on booty shaking and weird hip juts, with absolutely no sense of rhythm, but Derek finds himself grinning and leaning a shoulder against the entryway wall to watch him. Over the next few minutes, Stiles stirs something in a pan on the stove, scrolling through the screen next to the stove before popping over and peering at Derek’s plants on the windowsill. After a moment, he shakes his head and goes into the fridge, coming out with a handful of green onions.

“What are you making?” Derek asks.

Stiles spins around. “Oh!”

Derek blinks. “Did I scare you?”

“I should put a bell on you!” Stiles presses a hand against his chest. “Are hearts supposed to go like that?”

“It’s just because I startled you,” Derek says after a moment of listening. “Yours is a little slower today than it usually is, actually.” A funny thought occurs to him. “You should get them to check and see if it’s grown. Small hearts beat faster.”

Stiles nods. “I’m making breakfast,” he says, moving back to the stove. “Eggs, and I looked up breakfasts and a lot of them had potatoes so I thought I’d try a recipe for those, and there’s some bacon. I think it’ll all go nicely with the bread you made.”

“I think it’ll be perfect,” Derek says softly. “Do you want any help?”

They work pretty well together, with Stiles adding onions to his potatoes while Derek slices bread, dishing eggs and potatoes while Derek takes bacon off cookie sheets and drains it on paper towel. It’s a beautiful day and the air’s not particularly toxic, so they can eat on the balcony and actually feel the air and sunshine. Derek’s definitely not going to be running after this kind of heavy breakfast, and he may have to introduce Stiles to fruits and vegetables other than potatoes and ketchup at some point so he doesn’t get scurvy or something.

Crap. “Ask – ask today if you need vitamins or anything,” Derek blurts out. He’s responsible for another person for longer than a weekend or a few days, responsible for their well-being and health. Stiles is… “How old are you?”

Stiles takes a bite of hash browns and shrugs. “I’m not entirely sure. I think Dr. S. started working on me about a decade ago? I’m really complicated,” he says earnestly, “And I cost a lot of money, so there were a lot of stops and starts. My original programming was quite different, too. The earliest I remember is about a year ago.”

A year is not enough time to learn to care for yourself, especially with a constantly changing body that somehow grows tastebuds, a heart, gods only know what else. Derek is going to have to make sure he’s getting enough… whatever, exactly, it is that he needs, that he has clothes and things to do and Derek is so not ready for this.

“You’d tell me if you need anything, right?”

Stiles nods. “You need more ketchup.”

He only really keeps a bottle around for Cora. He grins and gets back to eating.

 

 

 

When he drops Stiles off, Derek pulls Scott the intern off to the side and asks about the girl.

“They wouldn’t tell me much,” Scott says. “But I think they wanted to observe her overnight. I was going to go check and see if she was still there after work.”

“What hospital was that again?”

Derek turns up the charm at the hospital, pretending to be, you know, friendly. He’s kind of out of practice with that one, but generally people respond better when you don’t glare and mutter… or at least that’s what Laura says, and she’s pretty good at getting people to do what she wants.

The girl, Erica, looks surprised to see him.

“I was going to bring you flowers or something, but I thought it’d come off really creepy,” Derek says. “Can I sit?”

“Are you gonna be creepy?”

“Probably, if you ask my sisters,” he mutters, and drops into the chair next to her bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Alright. Thanks for not putting anything in my mouth and breaking my teeth.” She fiddles with the edge of the blanket. “You don’t need to check on me. You did the good Samaritan thing. We’re good.”

Derek shrugs, glancing at the door. She seems to be in a fairly quiet wing of the hospital, no roommate.

“That’s not really why I’m here,” he says slowly. “Do you take medication for them?”

“I take all the medication,” she says bitterly. “The medication, the special diet, everything. I’m just an oh-so-special case.”

Derek leans forward, trying to make eye contact. “There is one more thing you could try,” he says.

And then he lets his eyes flare red, just for fun.

 

 

 

“What are you even studying at this point?” Derek asks as Stiles sticks wireless electrodes over his forehead.

Apparently one of the things that he does on a daily basis are ongoing research projects. Projects that involve physical, hands-on work. Something about his ability to learn versus his ability to record or memorize information. As someone who has seen Stiles learn to cook a few basic dishes, and tasted a few of the times when memorizing the information very much does not mean ability to actually do the task, Derek has faith in him, but… well.

If Stiles wants to use him for his projects, it’s not like he has anything else to do today besides trying to track a giant lizard that doesn’t seem to leave a scent or any trace of itself. Which is not at all frustrating.

“Alpha brainwaves versus beta brainwaves.” Stiles pauses. “In this case, alpha meaning the lycanthropic state because I think there are beta waves, and that’s kind of confusing. I’ve already done Scott’s.”

At his instruction, Derek stretches out on the lump couch in the lab, resting his stocking feet on one arm.

“How long have you been an Alpha again?” Stiles asks.

“About four months.”

“Did you know they did some studies about the hormone levels of new bitten werewolves?” Stiles asks, sitting on the floor next to the couch with his tablet. “I tracked them in Scott after he was bitten, and it’s really quite interesting. There was another about the hormone levels in new alphas, but it was behind a paywall and I was out of allowance.”

Derek laughs, surprising himself. “I’ll spot you the cash for it, if you want. You feel a really strong urge to create a pack. One way or another.”

He hadn’t been sure which was more strange, the urge to sink his teeth into anyone who had a heartbeat and looked decent, or that he had never been more tempted to somehow acquire a baby. Not that he was completely adverse to the idea of kids, one day, maybe, but he’d caught himself thinking that people who stepped too far away from their kids at the grocery store probably didn’t want them that badly anyways, and that was just completely ridiculous and also really creepy and weird, and he’d had to have his groceries delivered for a while.

“Okay, I need some readings of you quiet,” Stiles says. “Do you want me to leave you alone in here for a couple minutes?”

“You can stay.”

Derek takes the moment to check in on Stiles’ heart. It’s grown slightly in the past couple weeks, the beat settling into something a little slower and deeper. Still fast and shallow compared to the average human heartbeat, only the tiniest perception of change, but Derek spends enough time listening to his heart that he notes the change.

“Okay,” Stiles says a few minutes late. “We’re good.”

“Okay.” Derek sits up and leans forward so Stiles can take the electrodes off without standing up. “You need anything else? For science,” he can’t help but add, because that had been how Stiles had phrased it, so enthusiastic about it that Derek hadn’t thought twice about it, hadn’t been able to.

“No.” Stiles grins, putting the electrodes away in their case. “Lydia or Scott should be here pretty quick anyways.”

“Well, I’ll stay until one them shows up if you want,” Derek says, stretching out on the couch again. It’s pretty comfortable, actually, in that ancient sagging grad school way. “Tell me about something. What you’re reading, if you want.”

The kid’s not the chatty sort, exactly, but when he knows about a thing, he wants to talk about it. Passionate. He starts to talk as he cleans up his equipment, telling Derek about a book he’s reading about… child development apparently. There’s a long moment where he hesitates, then sits on the very edge of the couch, barely brushing against Derek’s legs. He’s always so hesitant to touch Derek.

Derek nudges him with a leg. “There’s room for you. You’re gonna fall off like that. Sit like you would if I was Scott.”

A moment later, he has Stiles’ weight perched on his legs. Very gingerly. Like he’s expecting Derek to shove him off.

“Closer,” Derek says, and gives him a nudge so he wobbles and squawks in an actually really amusing way. “Get comfortable.”

With only a little bit of a glare, Stiles settles his ass into the space between Derek’s legs and the back of the couch. A moment later, he’s talking again, relaxing a little more each moment. After… everything, Derek knows all too well what it’s like to have people touch you when all you want to do is curl up in a ball in bed, how it can make you want to claw your skin off, but Stiles – Stiles isn’t exactly subtle, and he’s so anxious for it that Derek has no idea why…

Hmm. Maybe Stiles is the one waiting for permission.

In the middle of thinking about that, Derek falls asleep.

When he wakes up, his legs are nearly numb, and Stiles is poking at his tablet aimlessly.

Derek jiggles his legs. “What are you still doing here?” he asks, his voice coming out hoarser than he expects until he clears his throat. “I thought you’d be working today.”

“Lydia popped in and said hi, but she couldn’t stay.” Stiles shrugs. “Scott never showed up. I don’t know. I think he’s hiding something from me. He’s been distracted and he hasn’t been… here as often.”

He’s upset. Derek would probably get called pouting or brooding depending on which sister had stumbled upon him, but sisters are different, and Stiles is different. To start with, no one ever actually expected him to be capable of _being_ upset, but also he’s… hard to read at times. Never wants anyone to actually know when he’s upset. Covers it with something, sarcasm or a joke, tries to talk to cover how quiet he goes.

“Maybe – oh, gods, my legs are asleep, lift up for a moment.” When he’s sitting up with legs that are more pins-and-needles than not, Derek hesitates a long moment before lightly brushing his knuckles down Stiles’ arm. “He could have met someone, maybe. A girl or a guy or somebody.”

“I thought he’d tell me,” Stiles says softly. “I thought – it’s stupid to think we’re friends. I mean, he’s a person with family and a brain that’s entirely grey matter and bones and not metal and plastic and circuitry.”

“Scott’s also a werewolf,” Derek points out. “He’s a person who grows claws and fangs and fur.” He glances at Stiles, watching the curve of his jaw as he swallows, the glint of his eyes. “You have friends. You eat scrambled eggs with ketchup for some ungodsly reason. You have projects and interests, and emotions.”

“I’m not human,” Stiles says bitterly.

“Well, neither I am.” He stretches his legs out. “Let’s go for a walk. You can show me around the building. The parts you know about that nobody else does.”

Stiles is curious to nearly the point of nosiness, and stubborn to boot. If he doesn’t know at least a few of the secrets of the building, Derek doubts anyone does. And the statement gets a grin from Stiles, and that’s well worth it.

“I used to hide in here,” Stiles says matter-of-factly of an alcove so small Derek can’t imagine him fitting in it. “When I was new and everything was scary and weird and bright and loud. My brain was different when I was new,” he explains as they walk down a hall. “A lot of what I remember is really confusing. I don’t think I really remember when everything was… programming. I know… what happened, and stuff, but it’s different. Like it wasn’t me yet.”

Derek’s not entirely sure he understands how Stiles’ brain works no matter how much he learns about it. It’s some complicated blend of machinery, circuitry, and creeping grey matter all irreversibly linked, and when he thinks a little more, maybe none of them really know how Stiles’ brain works, including both Stiles and the man who invented him. He’s kind of incredible like that.

There’s more that make Derek smile, a nook here, a hidden crawlspace there, but the oddest one is a large, empty storage closet.

“Nobody ever–”

Derek clamps a hand over Stiles’ mouth. His heart jackrabbits, and he goes so stiff Derek worries he’ll snap.

He puts his mouth close to Stiles’ ear. “Shh, shh, you’re okay. Listen.”

There’s voices coming from the air vent. Argents, Chris and Gerard at least, and when Stiles hears them, he grabs onto Derek’s arm and – buries his face in Derek’s shoulder. He _smells_ like fear, and Derek’s not even entirely sure how he’s capable of that, but when he lightly touches Stiles’ back, he’s shaking like a leaf. He exhales, softly, and begins to rub up and down the kid’s spine. He hasn’t done this in a long time, comforted someone, and he’s probably no good at it.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Chris Argent’s voice says through the vent. “The kanima is a creature of vengeance. It has one purpose. One goal only. You can’t bargain or reason with it. Someone’s going to get killed.”

“Nothing has happened,” Gerard’s voice says, and Derek grits his teeth. “Everything’s under control.” There’s a noise like the sound of chair scraping, and Stiles jumps, the smallest inhale catching in his throat. “Maybe a little vengeance is needed anyways.”

“We have a code.”

“Not when they murdered my daughter. No code,” Gerard says, and Derek goes cold. “Not anymore. From now on, these things are just bodies waiting to be cut in half. Are you listening? Because I don't care if they're wounded and weak. Or seemingly harmless - begging for their life with the promise that they will never, ever hurt anyone. Or some desperate, lost soul with no idea what they're getting into. We find them. We kill them. We kill them all.”

Derek doesn’t wait to hear more. He opens the door as quietly as he can and rushes Stiles out of the closet. It must be on the other side of Argent’s office, or something, or one that Gerard’s taken over. Derek’s not even sure at this point, he just knows he’s not sticking around to hear more.

“I don’t think you should hold my arm so tight,” Stiles says when they’re far enough away to not be heard.

He’s holding tight enough to bruise, and he lets go with a curse. “Sorry. I’ve gotta – I need to call my mother.”

“They can’t do that,” Stiles says, low and angry in a way that surprises Derek. “They can’t hurt you, they can’t do this. It’s against the law. It’s _murder_.”

“They only need to attack unprovoked once,” Derek mutters, numb. Stiles can’t stay here, he realizes after a long moment. Not alone, not without Derek. If Gerard found out about Stiles – he’s not safe here. “I need to take you home for the day.”

On the way into the lab, Stiles nearly crashes into Scott.

“Where have you been?” Stiles asks, smacking him. “Hey, we need–”

“I have to go, sorry,” Scott blurts and is gone a second later.

Stiles stares after him, then looks down with a look on his face that Derek can’t figure out until he raises his hand – and it’s covered in blood.

Derek jerks the lab door open. “Wash your hands and get your stuff together. Now.”

 

 

 

Stiles is curled into a ball in the corner of the couch, wrapped in a blanket. There’s a mug of tea on the table next to him, mostly because Derek found himself making it without thinking about it, automatic response. His mother is a tea fan, especially in times of stress, and he has years of memories of his father handing her a steaming mug while she was dealing with some problem or another.

“It’s not legal,” Stiles says, softly.

“We’re all registered with California,” Derek says numbly. His entire body feels numb.  
“None of us are rogue or violent.”

“Something being illegal doesn’t always mean that people don’t do it anyways!” Stiles blurts, and Derek can hear the echo of his own words. He regrets them, despite their truth, regrets giving that fear to Stiles.

“The kanima only goes after murderers,” Laura’s voice says through Derek’s phone, then, “It’s supposed to only go after murderers. Derek, have you noticed Gerard is sick? He carries around this little pillbox all the time, and he stinks.”

“I try not to get that close to any Argent,” Derek says sharply, as his phone flashes. “Someone’s calling. Go home to Mom’s after work, okay?”

“You’re not _my_ Alpha,” she says because, well, she is his sister. “I will,” she adds, and hangs up.

Stiles glances at the phone, then leans forward and grabs it before Derek can. “That’s Scott’s number. Scott?” He frowns, ducking his head. “No, he’s here. I just – are you okay?” He swallows, hard. “You bled on me.”

Derek leans forward enough that he knows Scott can hear him. “Tell him that if he doesn’t get his ass here in the next twenty minutes I’ll find him and drag him here by his spleen.”

“Yeah, that,” Stiles says, and – hangs up. He puts the phone down on the couch between them, looks at it, then looks at Derek. “I think I’m mad at him.”

Derek holds back a smile. Yeah, he’s maybe a little angry. It’s got a bit of colour in his cheeks, and his eyes are flashing, so Derek will let him be angry. God knows he doesn’t have enough of his own anger. Too much, probably, but maybe a little anger will do Stiles some good.

He’s certainly forcing back his own when Scott shows up, smelling of blood and sweat, and begins to make excuses for the fact that he’s apparently working with Gerard.

“He threatened my mom.”

Stiles stands up, tripping over the blanket that inexplicably tangles around his feet, and stumbles to Scott – then slaps him across the side of the head.

“That hurt!”

“It was supposed to!” Stiles kicks him in the shin, eliciting a yelp out of Scott. “You lied to me. We’re a team, you and me and Lydia and Dr. S. and Derek. You’re not supposed to hide stuff from us.”

Us? Derek blinks at that one. Well. He’s gonna be the one who offers the olive branch, apparently.

“You should come to the next full moon,” Derek says.

Scott makes a face. “I’m not interested in being part of your pack. I know you want to bite Erica Reyes.”

“I offered her the bite,” Derek affirms. “She still has almost a month before she can even decide.”

“What?”

Derek stretches his legs out in front of him. “A month’s waiting time, at least. She’s going to attend the full moon with my mother’s pack first, and I wouldn’t bite her so close to a full moon anyways. An Alpha is less stable without a pack,” he adds after a minute. “The bite is a gift. It can take away illness, make you stronger. But it’s also a responsibility. It would be her choice. And _I_ wasn’t inviting you. My mother asked me to ask about you.”

After a long moment, Scott sits down. “Sorry.”

“You shouldn’t listen to Gerard to try and get an idea of what we’re like.” Derek glances at Stiles, who’s back on the couch, but less curled in on himself. “What do you think he’d say about Stiles?”

Stiles, who is some strange blend of android and person, who has titanium bones and a fragile, delicate heart, who has machinery in him that Derek could scarcely begin to understand and has grown body parts, whose brain is complicated and amazing, who likes scrambled eggs and ketchup. He’s not even close to human, but he’s the last thing from dangerous. Hell, they give him dinosaur-shaped gummy vitamins just to make sure he’s getting everything he needs for his organic matter to be healthy, and Derek caught him yesterday stomping them around roaring at each other.

He’s not dangerous, but he’s not human, and Gerard would wipe him out in an instant if he found out.

“He didn’t want this,” Stiles says defensively. “He was attacked. He didn’t choose it.”

“Neither did I,” Derek points out. “This is how I was born. Going about it alone isn’t working, though. Gerard threatened your mother, but he declared fucking war on my family. My sister is twelve. Half my cousins are under the age of ten. My cousin Peggy’s baby is only ten months old. He’s not even talking yet. You think when Kate Argent tried to burn down my house she thought about what my five year old sister wanted?”

“Okay. Okay, you’re right,” Scott says. “But that… thing. How do we fight it?”

“Not alone,” Stiles says.

 

 

 

It’s not an easy night. Derek can’t shut his brain off right. He’s too paranoid to leave Stiles alone to go for a run, and possibly a little too frightened of his mother to run at night alone with Gerard Argent’s threats still ringing in his ears. He dozes a little, here and there, waking up at the sound of soft padding footsteps outside his door. Stiles. Several minutes later there’s a faint tap on his door.

“You can come in,” Derek says.

Stiles peeks around the door. Derek’s been leaving the hall lights on low for him at night – he wanders sometimes at night, and he’s also one of the clumsiest people Derek’s ever met and trips over air. The dimmest setting isn’t enough to leak around the edges of the door, but it’s enough to block him so he’s only an outline, hiding the expression on his face.

“Okay?”

After a long moment, Stiles comes over and sits on the edge of Derek’s bed. “Something weird happened.”

Derek waits.

“I was watching TV,” Stiles says slowly. “And then I wasn’t? It was like my sleep mode, but different. I saw pictures…”

Derek looks up at the ceiling. “Maybe you were sleeping.”

“No, it was different.”

“Not that kind of sleep,” Derek says, and grins a little. “My kind of sleep. It sounds like you were dreaming. What did you dream about?”

“Bad things,” Stiles says so quietly Derek can barely hear him.

Oh.

“You had a nightmare.”

“What do you do after nightmares?” Stiles asks, his voice tight. “I can’t remember.”

“Depends on the person,” Derek says. “I read a lot. Run sometimes if it's nice. Cora wants to sleep with Mom usually, or whoever’s around. You want to stay with me for a bit?”

“I was… charging.”

Derek shrugs. “Go get what you need. Whatever you need.”

While he’s in his room, Derek goes over to the climate control panel next to the door. The lowest light setting, he thinks, just enough to keep the edge of darkness off. Nothing too extreme, just ones he’d turn on for Cora, the tiny ones set into the baseboards that you can hardly see by, but are apparently enough to keep the scary things away. He’s debating over the climate when Stiles returns.

“I keep my room cooler than yours, I think,” Derek says. “You want me to turn the heat up a little?”

“That’s okay.”

He’s brought back his pillow, blanket, the wolf Derek gave him that first day, and a coil of wire Derek’s never seen.

“Plugs on either side of the bed. Your choice.”

Stiles takes the empty side, which Derek is secretly pleased at. He’s a wolf of habit, alright?

“I need to recharge every few days,” Stiles says slowly, discomfort lacing his words.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Derek says, rearranging the sheets on his side so they’re back how he likes them, fluffing the pillows. “You’re allowed to keep things private from me if you don’t want to talk about them.”

After a long pause, Stiles nods and slips the end of the cord under the back of his shirt. There’s a blink of light for a moment, and then Stiles settles onto his side. Curled up around his pillow and the wolf toy, his blanket wrapped around him. Derek tucks the rest of the blankets around him, tries to make him look less vulnerable before stretching out himself.

Stiles fidgets for a moment, rubbing the wolf toy’s ear between his fingers. “Can I ask you something? A personal question?”

“Go for it.”

“You told me that Kate Argent made you think you loved her.” Stiles won’t look at him. “That means sex, right?”

Derek closes his eyes. He’s not asking to be cruel, Derek reminds himself. Probably couldn’t do that if he tried, and obviously is trying to be as careful as he can. “Yes,” he says, when he knows his voice won’t be too sharp.

“I was – I have… I wasn’t really built to… or for… but I think I can and…”

“You’re curious,” Derek says. He’s not opening his eyes, or he’s not going to be able to have this conversation. “And you have a healthy functioning body.”

“Yes,” Stiles says, nearly a whisper.

“You sure you don’t want my mom to give you this talk? It’s a horrifying, scarring, proud Hale family tradition.” Derek listens to Stiles’ snort and exhales. This is going to be horrible. There’s no way he can do this right. “I’m – sex can be fun. It can be a way of sharing love with a person. Or something that just feels good. Or anywhere in between. Sometimes it can be a bad experience. But you’re not bad for wanting it or for having it.”

Oh, God, what else did his mother say that he tuned out for being horribly, horribly embarrassed?

“You can, uh.” He clears his throat. “Well, your bedroom has a lock if you want to…”

“Masturbate?” Stiles says, and the smartass sounds way too amused by that.

“It’s perfectly natural and stop laughing. You can learn what you like. Knock it off with the giggling.” He nudges Stiles’ knee with his, waiting until the mattress stops shaking. “If you try anything, just relax and don’t stress about it. I think… I think it’s best to have it with someone you trust, but it’s your choice.”

“What about you?”

“Oh God.” Derek flops onto his back, throwing his arm over his eyes. “I don’t know. There’s been people other than Kate, but I don’t really…”

“Sometimes people don’t have sex,” Stiles says tentatively. “Or sometimes they don’t feel sexual attraction. I read about that.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” Derek shrugs, dropping his arm, but not altogether ready to look at the kid. “I haven’t really thought about it like that. It’s just never been something I’ve really needed, I guess.”

With Paige, they were young and he thought he just wasn’t ready. After Kate… he thought, for a while, she’d broken something in him, that there was a part of him that didn’t work because of her, because he didn’t want things the way everyone else seemed to. His therapist had suggested he might be on the ace spectrum early in their first sessions, but everything was so raw then that he couldn’t believe she might be right and had brushed it off.

Maybe it was time to re-examine things again, though.

“Are… do you like… date?”

Derek snorts. “I’m not opposed. Haven’t for a while. How about you?”

Stiles inhales sharply. “I can’t date. I’m not even human.”

“Neither am I,” Derek reminds him. “You don’t have to be human.”

 

 

 

The morning is warm and sunny. Derek wakes up with Stiles touching him more than not, hands brushing here, knee touching there. A cord tangled around his wrist that Derek gently unwraps and tucks under Stiles’ blanket. Not that he minds, but it seems to embarrass Stiles. His eyes are shut, and Derek’s not sure, but he might be sleeping. He doesn’t stir until Derek starts to get up.

“I think I was dreaming again,” Stiles murmurs, wrapping his arm around his pillow. “It was nicer this time.”

“Yeah?” Derek asks. He tugs the blankets up over Stiles’ shoulders. “What was it this time?”

“The beach. I’ve never seen one for real, but it looks nice in pictures.”

“I think today you should stay home.” Derek picks up Stiles’ wolf and smoothes its fur. “I don’t want you anymore near Gerard without me, let alone the kanima.”

“Oh.” Stiles shrugs a little. “Alright.”

“How about I make you breakfast before I leave, though?”

Stiles is quiet for a moment, then shakes his head. “No, thank you. I don’t feel like eating.”

The duration of Derek’s shower is spent worrying that he’s hurt Stiles. He’s a bit of a breakfast fiend, especially if there’s an opportunity for potatoes, which almost any form of makes him happy. But by the time Derek’s dressed, Stiles has made coffee and is sitting at the table in his pajamas, and he doesn’t seem upset or angry.

Leaving him is weird. The only place Derek leaves him normally is his lab.

“Lock up and set the security when I leave,” he instructs. “There’s stuff for sandwiches and fruit and snacks. Don’t cook anything, okay? Call me if anything comes up.”

Yeah. Leaving Stiles is weird.

Derek has a very vague plan. Planning is maybe not his strongest area. He drives for a while, not anywhere in particular, trying to put the pieces together until his phone rings. Erica?

“Got a question?” he answers.

“Derek, there is a giant ass lizard outside my office door,” she whispers.

“Hide,” he says immediately. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Hide and stay quiet. Stay on the phone with me. Do not go anywhere near it.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Shh. I’ll tell you when I get there.”

Derek drives faster than his car wants to let him, far over the speed limit, parking hastily only legally enough that he won’t get towed. Erica works in one of the basement offices, near the morgue where Derek first met her. There’s no sign of the kanima, and no sign of Erica until he softly calls her name. Smart girl, he thinks as she crawls out of a closet. There are jackets in there, lab coats, maybe, and the scents lingering are confusing.

“Okay, here.” He hands over his key cards. “Black Camaro. Wait for me in it. I need to go get my sister. I’ll get you to the door.”

“I can help,” Erica insists, but she doesn’t look any more certain than he does.

“Not when you’re human. That thing is impossible to fight. And it has paralytic venom, a neurotoxin. Let’s go.”

She makes it out safely, but there’s at least one other werewolf in the building. There’s no reason for the kanima to go after an office worker, a human girl. But if Gerard has decided to wipe out his species, Derek’s scent on her could have attracted it. So he takes the stairs because he’s faster than the elevators, and bursts into Laura’s office.

“Hi?” she says cautiously.

“It’s out.” Derek throws open the drawer of Laura’s desk where she keeps her purse. “We need to leave, now.”

He insists they stop at Stilinski’s lab first. Scott and Lydia are both there, but the doctor isn’t.

“He took the day off,” Lydia says. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” Derek replies bluntly. “It’s not safe for either of you to be here right now.”

Lydia spends so much time working with Scott, or working with Stiles, that she’s probably in more danger than Erica. And Derek’s not about to leave either of them to possibly get horrifically murdered by a vengeance lizard.

“I’m putting a lot of trust in you,” Lydia says as she throws her tablet into her bag. “Especially since Stiles didn’t come in this morning.”

“Stiles didn’t come in today because it’s not safe here,” Derek snaps.

“Trust us, Lyds,” Scott says. “Let’s get out of here.”

Lydia’s a weak spot, completely human and vulnerable, but having Scott and Laura helps ease Derek’s mind slightly. Scott’s a wildcard – Derek’s never fought alongside him, doesn’t know how he moves or thinks – but he’ll be strength, at least, and Derek trusts Laura to have his back more than almost anyone.

“It’s so strong,” Scott says to Derek as they’re all making a hasty but quiet retreat down the stairs. “It nearly gutted me yesterday and it only stopped because of him.”

“Are you talking about Gerard’s kanima?” Lydia asks behind them and Derek misses a couple of steps.

“How do you _know_ that?” Scott gasps.

She gives a shrug. “I hear things.”

Laura gives her a long look. “When we’re not running away from a murder lizard, we’re going to discuss what exactly you mean by that.”

Derek’s never been so glad to see a parking lot.

And then the kanima lands in front of them, and basically everyone shrieks.

Including Scott who shouts a curse and trips backwards, nearly taking down Derek and Laura in one fell swoop. Scott McCall, ladies and gentlemen, Derek thinks as he grabs the idiot by the back of his shirt and steadies him. He may actually be worse than Stiles. How the fuck is he so clumsy after the bite?

“Takes the legs,” he says to Scott, to both him and Laura. “Stay away from the claws. Lydia, get to my car. Tell Erica to get out of here if you can.”

After that, he doesn’t focus on anything except trying to do as much damage as he can to the kanima. Laura’s his sister, not his beta, and Scott’s not anything, but he’s the only Alpha here. He’s the strongest, and he needs to be the one who leads, who protects the others. He trusts Laura to have his back, and they work well together. Same as the fight with Peter, same as they’ve been doing since they were kids, but he’s going to be the one making sure the others get out.

Scott’s not trained, not sure of himself. He’s earnest but clumsy, and Derek’s not surprised when he goes out first, taken down by a swipe of claws across the back of his neck. Even so, they begin losing ground without him, taking more injuries, and Derek only barely shoves Laura out of the way in time to take a gut-punch of claws.

“Get out of here,” he gasps, and throws the kanima off as hard as he can, fighting to buy her a moment to run.

“No–”

“Laura!”

And then a truck slams into the kanima, sending it flying.

A young black boy throws the driver’s door open, leaning out to try and see around the front of the truck. “Did I get it? And what the fuck was that?”

“Take Scott,” Derek says to Laura. “Go, or I’ll tell Mom.”

“Then I’ll tell Mom you tried to get yourself killed,” she snaps back, already dragging Scott’s arm over her shoulders.

“I’m right behind you,” he says, and tries to be convincing, like half his internal organs aren’t about to fall out.

“Hi, I’m Laura, and you’re driving,” Laura says to the boy, shoving Scott into the passenger side of his truck. “Stay away from the lizard.”

“I’m telling Mom,” Derek says thickly as she returns to where he’s having trouble getting off the ground. He has to lean on her hard once he’s on his feet, and she’s not much steadier than he is. Both of them are bleeding freely, Scott’s paralyzed, and they have three humans to protect.

So of course that’s when the kanima stirs.

“Sorry,” Derek breathes. “For not being around more.”

Laura lets out a choked sob. “I should have been there for you. Don’t apologize.”

“Well, if I can’t, you can’t either.” He exhales, squeezes her shoulder. “We can buy them time.”

She nods.

“No!”

These people will literally be the fucking death of him, Derek thinks dimly as Lydia bursts out of his car, eating pavement because like a _smart person_ Erica was already driving – not away from them, because every single person he knows is apparently fucking stubborn as hell, but driving nonetheless – and getting to her feet scraped from thigh to ankle, running towards the giant fucking lizard.

Lydia stops, far too close to the kanima. “Allison!” she shouts, then, softer. “Allison.”

The waiting nearly kills Derek. Well, that and the copious bleeding, but the wait does not help. He’s really not looking forward to his last sight being Lydia getting her head ripped off. Maybe – maybe it’ll paralyze her. She’s human, after all.

And then there is a naked girl standing in front of Lydia, and collapsing into her arms.

“They told me you were dead,” the girl sobs, and there’s blue flashing from her clenched-shut eyes, fur creeping across her face. “They said you died, they said you were dead!”

“Allison,” Lydia breathes reverently.

 

 

 

Allison Argent, to be exact, who ended up drowning in a spare shirt from the boy who drove his truck into the lizard version of her, the boy whose name turns out to be Boyd. He’s probably twice her size, and nonplussed by her sudden de-scaleing, nudity, or furriness. He’s also nonplussed by the fact that they’ve basically kidnapped him.

They end up at Laura’s little rental house since it’s closer than Derek’s apartment in Old Town or their mother’s place out on the Preserve. Apparently Derek’s gaping stomach wound is a bit of a priority, because Laura abandons everyone and everything else to get it cleaned and kind of shove his liver back into place. She bandages him up with firm, precise hands that remind Derek of his mother and childhood injuries, bones broken and healed badly that needed to be snapped back to heal properly, splinters healed over and needing to be dug out.

“You do anything like this again, I will personally resurrect you just to kill you again myself,” she says fiercely.

“You can tell Mom too.” He grabs her arm before she gets away. “Hey, I don’t – I don’t blame you for anything, you know? I was an idiot, nobody could have stopped me.”

Laura frowns at him. “No, Derek, it doesn’t work like that,” she says, softly enough that the noise in the house almost covers it. “She was an adult and she hurt you. And you know if it was me, or Cora you’d be saying the same thing.”

“That’s not fair,” he mutters, and he knows he sounds like he’s five. Sisters are good for that.

“Yeah, yeah,” Laura says with a cautious smile. “I’m gonna see if Allison wants pants. Don’t move until you heal a bit.”

When he feels less like his insides are going to be outside, he eases himself up. Gets stuck halfway because _gods_ that hurts, but he gets there eventually, and makes his way into the living room. He has to sit pretty quick, and ends up leaning of the arm of the couch.

“You should probably explain some things,” Laura says, handing Allison a pair of leggings.

Lydia has one of Allison’s hands in both of hers, and looks like she’s never going to let go. Her leg is bandaged, probably care of Scott who’s putting gauze and tape away in a first aid kit that Derek doesn’t recognize. “We were camping in the woods a few months ago and something attacked us,” she says. “A werewolf, I guess, but I’ve never seen one that looked like that.”

“Really big, kind of King Kong looking, red eyes?” Scott interrupts.

“Yeah,” Lydia says, frowning. “How did you know that?”

“It’s the only rogue we’ve been able to track going through Beacon Hills,” Scott says. “That was around when I was bit.”

Lydia nods. “We both were, too. I had an allergic reaction or something and I ended up in a coma for a few days. I didn’t heal or turn like they expected. When I woke up, they told me Allison was dead.”

“Mine went strange,” Allison says softly. “They told me Lydia had been killed. My grandfather, my grandfather said our family took care of it if we were bitten, that we couldn’t become what we hunted. He said if my father knew he would…”

She looks down at her hands, something painful flashing across her face.

“Even Chris Argent isn’t that much of a prick,” Laura says gently. “Gerard, yeah, but Chris wouldn’t do that, not to you. Do you know what Gerard was planning?”

“No.” Allison shakes her head. “I lost a lot of memory, and he never told me things anyways, just… made me do them.”

“You can come stay with me,” Lydia says, smiling through tears. “We can be roommates. I have a closet full of clothes I kept buying you while you were gone and I’d forget.”

Derek probably won’t feel right until later tonight, but he’s feeling okay enough to move, and he stands up. “I need to go check on Stiles. Ah.” He nods at Boyd, who’s sitting next to Erica on Laura’s loveseat, and taking things way too calmly. “Thanks for the help. We owe you one.”

“When I figure out what’s going on, I’ll decide what that is,” Boyd agrees with an easy grin.

Derek lets the car navigate for once, not trusting his own driving skills when he’s still healing. He’s going back to bed, he decides. Maybe not calling it a nap, but he’s going to stretch out in his bed and maybe ask Stiles if he wants to watch a movie while Derek pretends he’s not napping. Food later, he thinks, when his stomach is more likely not to go anywhere, and perhaps something greasy and salty and delicious.

“Hey,” he calls out as he lets himself into the apartment.

It’s dark. The lights are all off, and the shades have been drawn so tightly it’s nearly as dark as night.

Derek goes tense. “Stiles?”

The television’s on in the living room, playing something but turned down low, and Derek is pretty sure the lump of blankets on the couch is Stiles. The tension in his muscles doesn’t ease, just changes to a new kind, as he approaches the couch. Something’s not right here.

“Hey, there.” He crouches next to the couch and begins the process of finding Stiles’ face under all the blankets. “Dreaming again?”

“I don’t think so,” Stiles whispers. “I feel strange.”

He looks… sweaty. Frowning, Derek reaches up and touches the back of his hand to Stiles’ forehead. “You’re really warm. Are you, like, overheating? Feel hot?”

“No, cold. My stomach’s strange too.”

“Strange how?” Derek gives the blankets a gentle nudge. “Show me where it feels strange.”

Stiles takes his hand and pulls it under the covers. Derek finds himself with his palm pressed against the burning hot bare skin of the right side of Stiles’ abdomen. Derek hesitates for a moment.

“What’s the strange feeling?”

Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t know, but it’s not very nice.”

“Let me try something,” Derek says and probes forward in the way he would to draw pain from someone. After a second it comes, and he ends up breathless. “Oh. You’re hurting. When did you start feeling pain?” he asks, softly.

“I didn’t know that’s what it was. I don’t like it.”

“No, most of us don’t.” Derek brushes a hand over Stiles’ hair. “I’m going to call John, alright? Don’t move.”

He has to go into the kitchen so Stiles doesn’t see him start shaking.

Or his pacing while he waits for John to pick up.

“He’s sick,” he says as soon as the doctor greets him. “I think he has a fever and he says his stomach hurts and did you know he can feel pain? When did he start being able to feel pain?”

“Where’s the pain?”

“Lower right side of his stomach. I don’t have a thermometer, I don’t know what his temperature is.”

John curses. “It sounds like appendicitis.”

“Does he have an appendix?”

“Maybe. We haven’t scanned him in a while.” There’s a shuffling noise on the other end. “Bring him in. We’ll–”

“No,” Derek says sharply. “Gerard Argent isn’t safe for any of us to be around. ARGENT isn’t safe.”

“Okay,” John says after a minute. “Okay, I think I can talk to some people and maybe find somewhere with the right equipment…”

“I might know someone.” Derek taps the table. “Call you back with the address if I’m right.”

He doesn’t know how to explain this. How do you explain that your android may have grown an appendix that has gotten... inflamed or infected or whatever appendicitis is, and you need to keep him away from the place that could probably help him because its president is dangerous to you and him?

“Hi, Mom,” Derek says a moment later. “I need your help. My – I have a friend who’s sick and he can’t go to the hospital.”

“I’ll call Deaton,” his mom says, and Derek nearly collapses with relief. “House or clinic?”

“Clinic’s closer.” He hesitates. “Can you come too?”

“Of course.”

When he hangs up, he can breathe a little easier. All he has to do is get Stiles to Deaton’s, and then there will be people who can make him feel better and who know what to do with breakable people who get terrifyingly sick while they’re alone and don’t _phone_ you.

“Okay,” Derek says, and goes back into the living room. “Let’s get going. We’re gonna go get you to someone who can make you feel better.”

“Did you call my d – Dr. S?”

Derek starts to dig Stiles out from under the covers. He’s not moving easily on his own, and he’s covered in about a dozen blankets, including a few off Derek’s bed and the giant quilt from his own room.

“Yeah, I called your dad,” Derek says softly.

They’re as good as, really. And families can come together in all sorts of ways. Birth and blood, marriage, adoption, pack bonds, even friends can become family. In a family like his, cubs are cubs no matter how you get them. Hell, until he was eight or nine, Laura told Derek that their mother found him on the side of the highway, and he not only believed it, but he was perfectly okay with that as long as Mom didn’t like Laura better.

“Let’s get you in the car, okay?” Derek says, still so softly it surprises him. He hasn’t spoken to anyone like this since… well, since Cora was tiny, and it was easy with her. “C’mon, I’ll help you up.”

After a moment, Stiles puts an arm on Derek’s shoulder and starts to stand, only to make a small, wounded sound when he moves.

“Shh, shh, I’m sorry.” That was the worst noise, and Derek is not ever doing anything to make Stiles make that noise again. “Okay, I have you. Just – just come here.”

Stiles’ arms go around his neck and Derek lifts him easily. He seems small suddenly, too hot and trembling. He takes Stiles and a blanket, because the kid is still shivering in his arms. His hands are shaking too hard to drive, so he selects the clinic and focuses on tucking the blanket around Stiles while the car navigates. And even after it’s in place, he keeps touching, stroking his hand down a trembling back, over the back of a sweaty neck, through his hair.

He’s a mess.

He’s a complete and utter mess, and he’s never been more glad to see Deaton’s clinic. The man’s an asshole, but he’s a good doctor, and he can make Stiles – they can make Stiles stop hurting.

“Now what have you gotten yourself into, Derek?” his mother says, raising an eyebrow.

John got to the clinic only moments after Stiles and Derek. Derek was moving so slowly, so carefully, with Stiles in his arms. Movements hurt him, especially jarring ones, and Derek can’t breathe when he makes that hurt noise, the ones he doesn’t even understand because he doesn’t even know how long Stiles has been feeling pain, but it hasn’t been long.

Now, he’s – Stiles is in the operating room, with John and Deaton, and Derek isn’t allowed in there.

“It’s not like you think,” he says pathetically. “He – he’s different.”

“Mm, yes, the heartbeat tipped me off on that one,” Mom says. “What’s he like, besides different?”

“A dork,” Derek says numbly. “He – he surprises me constantly. All of us. He’s weird, and funny, and he eats eggs with ketchup, and he dances in the morning when I’m not up yet. He’s a really bad dancer.”

Mom slips her arm around his shoulders and pulls him in closer. “You care about him.”

“That day with kanima,” he says slowly, because he never did tell her the full story. “It attacked me and paralyzed me and he saved me from drowning. Chris Argent offered me anything I wanted as… retribution, I guess. I turned him down, but then… I don’t even know what made me do it,” he admits. “It felt right.”

His hands are cold and sweaty, trembling. Strangely empty. He wants something to hold onto, something to do or fiddle with. Anything to keep his hands busy, and how very not like him that was. He _wants_ to be in the operating room, holding Stiles’ hand or telling him it’s okay, but he’s not allowed for various reasons. Emotion, space, lord knows what else. Probably more the emotion than anything, Derek admits. It’s experimental how they’re going to dose Stiles with painkillers, let alone knock him out. He wouldn’t be able to watch them do this.

Derek is expecting his mother to say something, about what Stiles is or what the hell Derek is doing, but instead she pauses for a long moment, then squeezes his shoulder. “The others are here.”

“What?”

He gets a kiss to the side of the head instead of an answer, and an answer in form of several people bursting through Deaton’s door into the waiting room.

“How is he?” Scott asks as Lydia says, “Did you know he had an appendix?” and Laura goes, “So this is why you’ve been hanging around so much?” and Erica adds a, “Hi, Mrs. Hale! I mean, Alpha Hale,” and his mother corrects her gently with a “Talia, please,” and Boyd and Allison look a little lost, and Derek has to look at Boyd for a moment and ask, “Did my sister actually kidnap you or have you been given the chance to leave?”

“It’s been an interesting night,” Boyd murmurs.

And of course, this all happens at once, everyone talking over each other and at the same time.

Family. Pack. Whatever you call it, it makes something in Derek’s chest loosen the slightest bit.

After a moment, though, his mother and Laura separate everyone into smaller groups, something Derek marvels at, the effortless way of keeping a group as a unit, but making it so they don’t all _murder_ each other. Laura pulls Scott off to the side to talk about gods even know what, but he looks a hell of a lot more comfortable with her than he ever had with Derek. Allison, Lydia, and Erica all end up in a conversation with his mother, largely between Allison and his mother, with Lydia refusing to leave Allison’s side and Erica hanging onto every word between them.

Himself, Derek winds up with Boyd in a chair next to him and a moment to breathe. He seems like a quiet kid, probably around the same age as Erica, though Derek’s shit at guessing ages, and solid.

“I assume,” Derek says eventually, “That someone explained this all to you?”

He shrugs. “You’re all werewolves, lizard girl is now a werewolf, something about Argent and then your sister was telling me I could drive or go home, and I think maybe there was something about a robot needing surgery?”

“Technically he’s an android. And Erica’s not a werewolf, and I don’t know what Lydia is.” Derek slumps back in his chair. At least Laura hasn’t kidnapped anyone. “Also, his name is Stiles.”

The surgery takes a long time. Derek can’t hear or smell anything from the back, something probably of Deaton’s doing, but the muted, empty feeling makes him sick and vaguely trapped. He’s probably broadcasting, too, with Laura and his mother pressing hands onto his shoulders and neck whenever they’re near. Comforting, solid touches that Derek half-suspects are to keep him from bolting.

He still wants to be holding Stiles’ hand.

Derek’s idly watching Lydia braid Allison’s hair into an incredibly intricate braid, the movement of her fingers strangely hypnotic. Cora would probably like something like that, too. She likes braids that keep her hair out of her face while she plays, but she also likes playing some combination of princess and outlaw that he can’t figure out, and apparently braids are good for that, too.

Then the door to the back opens.

Derek doesn’t even remember standing up, let alone crossing the room, but he bounces off the mountain ash barrier before he even realizes what he’s doing.

“Is he okay?” he asks as Deaton opens the gate.

“He’s fine,” Deaton says, gesturing. “You can come back if you’d like. I believe Dr. Stilinski will be able to explain the situation better.”

He’s not moving. It looks unnatural on him, and Derek hadn’t realized how used to Stiles’ constant movement he’d become. When he slept – or whatever he was doing – he wasn’t even still, nudging Derek’s legs with his feet, eyes fluttering under his eyelids, fingers twitching on the edge of the pillowcase, on the sheet, on the stuffed wolf.

“What happened?” Derek asks, hollow.

“Sleep mode,” Stilinski says from where he’s sitting next to Stiles’ head, tablet in hand. “He was scared of – of feeling it.”

Derek slowly loses feeling in his legs from the knees down, and he has to sit down, hard, on the chair on the other side of Stiles’ bed. He hadn’t been allowed to come with Stiles, and he’s not one to argue with Deaton. The man, frankly, scares him a little.

“I’m going to…” Stilinski frowns. “For lack of a better word, bring him back online. He might not wake up right away, though, until the anaesthesia wears off, and he might be a little groggy. I want to keep him on at least a low level of painkillers until we know how he’s feeling and how much he needs.” He looks up, finally, blinking. Derek is suddenly, painfully reminded of Stiles. “His vitals are – well, they’re completely ridiculous, but for him they’re normal. The surgery went well. I’m not going to say there were no surprises, but that’s life with him.”

Derek looks down at Stiles, at the curve of his eyelashes against his cheek, the moles and freckles splayed across his skin, and nods. “Yeah.”

 

 

 

“I want waffles.”

“Maybe for lunch.” Stiles has been having trouble with heavy food, especially in the morning. It’s only been a few days since his surgery, and anything too heavy refuses to settle. John thinks it could just be the pain medication and isn’t too worried about it, but Stiles’ eyes have been bigger than his stomach a couple times already, and Derek knows he’s not really asking. He’s the one dealing with it. The wistful tone half-kills him, though. “How about some yogurt? Laura brought some strawberries from the greenhouse yesterday.”

“Okay.” Stiles sighs. “Hot chocolate?”

“Orange juice?”

“Apple,” Stiles says dejectedly.

“I’ll use one of the curly straws you like,” Derek says, and glances a kiss off Stiles’ temple before he starts to stand.

They both freeze.

“Sorry,” Derek says awkwardly. “I–”

“Was that bad?” Stiles asks, staring with the widest eyes Derek has ever seen.

Oh, God, he’s the worst person ever. He’s absolute fucking scum.

“No.” He shakes his head. “But – but you shouldn’t kiss people unless you know they want you to. Or you ask. And I shouldn’t have–”

“Can I kiss you?” Stiles blurts, and that’s – well, that’s not really what Derek was expecting. How exactly is he supposed to answer that? And… what exactly does he mean by kissing? Because there are a lot of kinds of kissing and Derek isn’t entirely sure where Stiles learned about kissing. They hadn’t really gotten to that part of the awkward conversation before Derek fell asleep out of sheer self-defence.

Stiles frowns suddenly. “Is that – is that not a thing you like? Because I know some people don’t like kissing and it’s okay, it’s okay to not like kissing and it’s – if you don’t want to kiss me, it’s okay.” His head ducks, and he stares at the blankets around his lap. “It’s – it’s weird anyways. I’m weird. Nobody wants to–”

“ _Don’t_.” Derek leans towards Stiles, unsure if he wants to touch or if his touch would even be welcome. “Don’t do that. It’s not like that. You’re not – you’re so much better than you think you are.”

“Yeah, well, so are you!” Stiles shoots back, eyes suddenly flashing with anger. “You’re nice and you cook really good and, like, you could tell when I was sick and you made it better, and you make nightmares better, and you’re my _friend_ and I like you a lot.”

Derek hesitantly reaches up, and he wants to touch the curve of Stiles’ jaw or his cheek where his skin looks incredibly, beautifully soft, or – but he loses his courage halfway there, and cups his hand over Stiles’ arm instead. Which isn’t a whole lot better, he realizes, when suddenly he’s got hand over skin bared by the sleeve of Stiles’ T-shirt and it is, yes, as soft as it looks.

“I want to,” Derek says, soft and a little thick. “I want to, but you have to want me to kiss you. And I don’t know if when we say kissing if you and I mean the same thing.”

Stiles bites his bottom lip, and leans forward. “Can I kiss you?”

“Is that – do you want to?”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Stiles says, and then kisses Derek, full on the mouth.

Oh. Well, they’re on the same page. Thank God. Stiles is hesitant, and the kiss is short and just a little damp.

In short, it’s pretty much perfect.

 

 

 

Gerard dies.

Alone and painfully, and he’s buried without ceremony.

There are other matters to attend to, though.

Derek flips through Stiles’ closet, frowning. The next time they go shopping, he needs to buy Stiles some warmer clothes. It’s getting cold, especially at night, and he mostly has summer clothes with a few hoodies. He tosses a long sleeved T-shirt at Stiles only to have it thrown back at him.

“It’s just the bottom layer.”

“The seams rub my side funny,” Stiles says. “What about the Ms. Marvel shirt? That’s my favourite.”

“It smells like Scott.”

Stiles shrugs. “I’m expensive, D. Hand me downs are a fact of life.” He grins suddenly. “Plus when he got bit, it stopped fitting him, so it’s mine now, no takebacks.”

Rolling his eyes, Derek tosses it at his head, and follows it up with the warmest hoodie Stiles owns. He’s tempted to add a flannel shirt, since Stiles enjoys them so much, but he barely knows how to dress humans, let alone Stiles, and four layers is probably over-doing it for a late September night. Maybe he’ll pack one, though. Just in case. And he does duck into his room and grab a pair of warm socks and a sweater. Both wool, which is more expensive than Derek usually cares to spend on clothing, honestly, but it’s the warmest thing.

“Are you packed?”

Stiles makes sad eyes. “No.”

Derek walks over to the bed, and drops the sweater and socks. Then he leans in, bracing a hand on either side of Stiles shoulders. “I’m not packing for you,” he says, and kisses Stiles’ forehead, right between his eyes where he’s frowning. “You’ve got two hours. Get into gear.”

Besides, he’s so nervous he’s about to explode. Packing will keep him busy. Especially the way Stiles packs, always so nervous he’ll forget something he desperately needs. He spent the night at Scott’s a couple weeks ago and Derek swears he took half the apartment with him.

Not like Derek wouldn’t bring him anything he needed anyways.

He grabs one of Stiles’ flannel shirts on the way out, one of the soft ones he likes, just in case.

 

 

 

“You think you need a scarf?” Derek asks as he adjusts the sweater around Stiles’ shoulder. He’s not entirely sure he owns any scarves, but his mother probably keeps them somewhere around the house. He barely found a pair of gloves, green and orange striped, with a fifty cent tag still on them. The only other pair he found were pink mittens leftover from Cora’s preschool days, which are in his jacket pocket now. He’s going to talk to Mom and see if one of the kids could use them, since they’re practically new.

You know. As soon as they get out of the car.

They’re both a little nervous, Derek think, but for different reasons. Stiles is worried people won’t like him, or that they’ll think he’s strange, but Derek… well, besides Laura, Derek hasn’t seen his family in four months. It was too overwhelming as a new Alpha, instincts telling him to stake out territory that he had no right to claim, and he’d gotten too close to doing things he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself for.

“Do you want me to pretend to be cold so you can go get me something else?”

Derek snorts. “No.”

The first person they run into is Cora. Derek swears to gods she’s at least an inch taller, and she has leaves in her hair and dirt on her face. She looks like their mother, tall and strong and powerful.

Then she kicks him in the shin.

“Ow! Cora!”

“You promised you’d take me to the science center.” She frowns at Stiles. “Who are you?”

He jumps, eyes going wide, and waves a green and orange striped hand. “Stiles. I’m Stiles, I mean. You’re Cora? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She nods. “Aunt Lucy is starting the bonfire if you wanna sit down.”

Then she kicks Derek in the other shin and runs away before he can stop her, and, like, hang her upside down by the ankles or something else brotherly.

“Is your entire family going to be concerned about me being cold?” Stiles asks, amusement in his voice.

“You still smell like healing. Hurt and blood and newness.”

Derek straightens the collar of Stiles’ shirt so it doesn’t bunch up funny, and tucks the sweater tighter around his shoulders. It’s hard to explain, but Cora’s old enough that she’s beginning to learn to recognize the scent, and kicking aside, she’s a good kid. There were days, back in the aftermath of Kate, where their mother dropping her off for a few hours or a night were the only reason he got out of bed.

So he takes a breath. “Let’s go find everyone.”

At first, Stiles stays close and a little quiet. It’s not like he’s ever met this many people at once before – or at all, really. His social circle consists mostly of people who built or study him, people he knows and trusts and loves. Everyone is kind and polite, but they’re curious, and it’s not… Stiles is pretty obviously not human, but so are probably eighty percent of the people around him, and Derek is pretty sure they’re more curious about the fact that Derek brought him, because what else is family for but prying into your romantic life?

And then he finds the food and Derek loses him completely for a good five minutes, caught talking to ninety year old Aunt Margaret who’s deaf as a stone and thinks Derek is forever in tenth grade. Or at least, pretends she does, because he’s not entirely sure she’s not just fucking with them all.

He finally escapes and finds Stiles with an already loaded plate.

“Everything looks so good,” he says almost mournfully.

Derek laughs and picks another plate up. “There’s probably twice as much inside.”

Werewolves don’t really do light meals.

They’re wandering over to the fire when someone shouts Stiles’ name. Derek has about a second to rescue his plate before Scott is grabbing Stiles in a bear hug, enthusiastic but visibly gentle.

“Hey!” Scott says, pulling back to grin at Stiles. “You look good! Oh, dude, it’s so awesome you’re here.”

“You, too.”

Scott glances over his shoulder, his face lighting up as he looks back. “I just met a girl,” he tells Stiles. “Her name is Kira and she’s really awesome.”

“Yakimura,” Derek supplies. “Allies of my mother’s. They’re kitsune, foxes.”

Stiles claps Scott on the shoulder. “Well, Scotty, I think you should bring the lady a drink.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll introduce you later!” Scott says, hugs Stiles again, and bolts with far more energy than anyone should have at six in the evening. Gods only hope no one lets him near the wolfsbane beer.

Stiles is laughing, though, taking his plate back from Derek and walking towards the bonfire with a little more confidence. They find two chairs close enough together to touch, and Derek lets Stiles steal things off his plate since he’s so excited about trying everything. He’s beautiful in the firelight, the glow turning his skin golden and his eyes liquid amber, and Derek feels at home. His family is around him, and he’s pretty sure Erica is somewhere around here, and he’ll probably talk to her later, but he’s already fairly certain of her decision, and he has a few ideas on growing his pack that feel right.

Later, Peggy’s oldest climbs onto Stiles’ lap. She’s two, and takes after her mom with dark eyes, warm brown skin, and a halo of short, fuzzy curls.

“Hi,” she says, solemnly.

“Could you guys watch her for a moment?” Peggy asks, shifting the baby against her shoulder. “I need to go put this guy to bed.”

There’s always someone in the house keeping an eye and an ear on the littlest ones who are too young to run around, or conk out early, usually his dad since he’s great with kids. Derek got stuck doing it once the week before Christmas, when he was seventeen. He ended up with glitter glue in his hair. And his ears. And up his _nose_.

One toddler is so much less terrifying.

“Sure,” Derek says with an easy smile.

“Hi,” Stiles replies to Irina, just as solemnly. “You are a very small person. Are you a werewolf, too?”

“Yeah!” she says, excitedly, and grabs his shirt so she can stand up on his lap. “Look!”

She flashes her eyes baby gold, just a second’s worth of glow before it fades, and she can probably only do it because of the full moon.

“Awesome,” Stiles says.

“Please?” she asks.

Oh. Derek leans forward. “Oh, sweetheart, Stiles can’t do that,” he starts to say, only.

Only Stiles is blinking, and his irises light up with that electric golden that Derek’s only seen once, to the delight of the baby. She smiles, settling back into Stiles’ lap with one of the graham crackers for the smores Stiles wants later.

“What does that do?” Derek asks curiously.

Stiles shrugs. “Infrared, night vision, thermal, data analysis, some other stuff. Also it just looks cool.”

Derek laughs. Of course.

Well. An android as the first member of a werewolf pack. Not the last, but definitely the first.

And it is a definite first.

Stiles touches the back of Derek’s hand and smiles.

They can totally do this.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a couple headcanons about this that I hint at. See if you can figure them out.


End file.
